Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Higgins, George V.

Best Quotes about Politics

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

10.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

11.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

12.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

14.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

15.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

17.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

18.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

19.

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.

20.

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.

21.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

22.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

23.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

24.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

25.

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

26.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

27.

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

28.

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

Marquis, Don

29.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

30.

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

31.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

32.

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

Russell, Dora

33.

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

Rostand, Jean

34.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

35.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

36.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

37.

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

Wilde, Oscar

38.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

39.

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

Benn, Tony

40.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

41.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

42.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

43.

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

Quinton, John

44.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

45.

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

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

Rostand, Jean

47.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

48.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

49.

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.

50.

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