Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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 hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

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

Clarke, James Freeman

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

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

Grant, Amy

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

10.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

11.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

12.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

13.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

14.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

15.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

17.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

18.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

19.

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

20.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

21.

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

Orwell, George

22.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

23.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

24.

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

25.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

26.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

27.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

28.

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

29.

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

Greeley, Horace

30.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

32.

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

Tweed, Boss

33.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

34.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

36.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

37.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

38.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

39.

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

Dane, Frank

40.

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

Pell, Claiborne

41.

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

Will, George F.

42.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

43.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

44.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

45.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

46.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

47.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

48.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

49.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.