Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

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

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

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

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

Hattersley, Roy

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

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

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

10.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

11.

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

12.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

13.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

14.

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

Orwell, George

15.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

16.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

17.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

18.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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.

20.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

21.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

22.

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

23.

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

24.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

26.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

27.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

28.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

29.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

30.

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

31.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

32.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

33.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

34.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

35.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

36.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

38.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

39.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

40.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

41.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

42.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

43.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

44.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

45.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

46.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

47.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

48.

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

49.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

50.

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