Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Tweed, Boss

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

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

Benn, Tony

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.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

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

Dane, Frank

10.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

11.

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

12.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

13.

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

Higgins, George V.

14.

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

15.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

16.

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

Arbuthnot, John

17.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

18.

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

Kissinger, Henry

19.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

21.

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

Seneca

22.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

23.

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.

24.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

25.

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

26.

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

Ephron, Nora

27.

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

28.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

29.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

30.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

31.

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

32.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

33.

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

Byrne, Robert

34.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

35.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

36.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

37.

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.

38.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

39.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

40.

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

41.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

42.

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

43.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

44.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

45.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

46.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

47.

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

Russell, Dora

48.

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

Eban, Abba

49.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

50.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S