Motivational Quotes

Politics

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

- Ephron, Nora

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

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

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

Peter, Laurence J.

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

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

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

Pell, Claiborne

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

10.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

11.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

12.

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

Marquis, Don

13.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

14.

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

Alfred E. Newman

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

18.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

Byrne, Robert

20.

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

Kissinger, Henry

21.

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

22.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

23.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

24.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

25.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

26.

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

27.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

28.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

29.

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

Eban, Abba

30.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Dane, Frank

35.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

36.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

37.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

38.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

39.

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

Grant, Amy

40.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

41.

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

Will, George F.

42.

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

43.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

44.

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

Bush, George

45.

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

46.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

47.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

48.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

49.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

50.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne