Motivational Quotes

Politics

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

- Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Best Quotes about Politics

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

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

Nathan, George Jean

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Bacon, Francis

10.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

11.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

12.

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

13.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

16.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

17.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

Kempton, Murray

19.

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

20.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

21.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

22.

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

23.

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

Tweed, Boss

24.

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

Pell, Claiborne

25.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

26.

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

27.

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

Larry Hardiman

28.

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

29.

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

Ambrose Bierce

30.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

31.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

35.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

36.

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

Fredrich

37.

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

38.

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

Platen

39.

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

40.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

41.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

42.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

46.

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

Brown, Jerry

47.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

48.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

49.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

50.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian