Motivational Quotes

Politics

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

- Huxley, Aldous

Best Quotes about Politics

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

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.

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

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

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

Noonan, Peggy

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

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

10.

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

Albert Einstein

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

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

Macmillan, Harold

13.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

16.

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

17.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

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

Swift, Jonathan

19.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

21.

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

22.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

23.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

24.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

25.

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

26.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

27.

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

Churchill, Winston

28.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

29.

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

30.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

31.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

32.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

33.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

34.

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

35.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

37.

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

Goldwater, Barry

38.

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

Rostand, Jean

39.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

40.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

42.

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

43.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

46.

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.

47.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

48.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

50.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De