Motivational Quotes

Politics

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

- Gaulle, Charles De

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Parkinson, Cecil

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Rostand, Jean

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

Rostand, Jean

10.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

11.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

12.

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

Bryan, William Jennings

13.

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.

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

16.

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

17.

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

18.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

20.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

21.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

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

Swift, Jonathan

23.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

24.

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

Quinton, John

25.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

26.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

27.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

28.

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

29.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

33.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

34.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

Shakespeare, William

37.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

38.

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

Reagan, Ronald

39.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

44.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

45.

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

46.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

47.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

48.

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

49.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

50.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander