Motivational Quotes

Politics

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

- Davis, Angela Y.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Byrne, Robert

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

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

Gaulle, Charles De

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Grant, Amy

11.

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

12.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

13.

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

14.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

15.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

16.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

17.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

18.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

19.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

20.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

21.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

22.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

23.

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

24.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

25.

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

26.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

27.

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

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

30.

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

31.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

32.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

33.

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

Eban, Abba

34.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

35.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

36.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

37.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

38.

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

Churchill, Winston

39.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

40.

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

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

41.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

43.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

44.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

45.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

46.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

47.

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

48.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

49.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

50.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore