Motivational Quotes

Politics

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Politics

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

10.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

12.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

13.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

14.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

15.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

16.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

17.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

18.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

19.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

20.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

21.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

22.

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

23.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

24.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

25.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

26.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

27.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

28.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

29.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

30.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

31.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

32.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

34.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

35.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

36.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

37.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

38.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

39.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

40.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

41.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

43.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

44.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

45.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

46.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

47.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

48.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

49.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

50.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.