Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Galbraith, John Kenneth

Best Quotes about Politics

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

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

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

Hearst, William Randolph

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

Bacon, Francis

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

10.

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

11.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

12.

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

13.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

14.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

15.

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

Pell, Claiborne

16.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

17.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

18.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

19.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

20.

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.

21.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

22.

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

Churchill, Winston

23.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

24.

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

25.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

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

27.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

28.

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

Orwell, George

29.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

30.

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

31.

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

Tweed, Boss

32.

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

Shakespeare, William

33.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

34.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

35.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

36.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

37.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

38.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

39.

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

40.

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

Dane, Frank

41.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

42.

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

43.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

44.

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

Brogan, Denis E.

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

47.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.