Motivational Quotes

Politics

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

- Coolidge, Calvin

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Thoreau, Henry David

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Russell, Dora

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

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

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

10.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

11.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

12.

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

Greeley, Horace

13.

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

Hubbard, Kin

14.

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

15.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

16.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

17.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

18.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

19.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

20.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

21.

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

22.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

23.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Rogers, Will

25.

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

26.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

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

28.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

29.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

30.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

31.

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

Dane, Frank

32.

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

33.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

34.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

35.

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

36.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

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

38.

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

Marquis, Don

39.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

40.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

41.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

42.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

43.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

45.

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

Rogers, Will

46.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

47.

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

48.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

49.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

50.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.