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

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Fredrich

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

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

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.

10.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

11.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

12.

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

Eban, Abba

13.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

14.

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

15.

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

Dane, Frank

16.

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

Will, George F.

17.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

18.

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

19.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

20.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

21.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

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

23.

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

Churchill, Winston

24.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

25.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

26.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

27.

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

28.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

29.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

30.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

31.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

32.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

33.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

34.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

35.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

36.

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.

37.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

38.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

39.

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

40.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

41.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

42.

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

43.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

44.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

45.

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

Kempton, Murray

46.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.