Motivational Quotes

Politics

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Politics

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

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

Mencken, H. L.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

10.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

12.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

13.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

14.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

15.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

16.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

17.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

18.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

19.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

20.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

22.

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

23.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

24.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

25.

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.

26.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

27.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

28.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

29.

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

30.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

31.

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

32.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

36.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

37.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

38.

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

39.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

40.

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

Hattersley, Roy

41.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

42.

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

Charles De Gaulle

43.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

44.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

45.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

46.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

47.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

48.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

49.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

50.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay