Motivational Quotes

Politics

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

- Huxley, Aldous

Best Quotes about Politics

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

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

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

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Peter, Laurence J.

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.

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

Seneca

10.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

11.

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

Mencken, H. L.

12.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

13.

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

14.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

15.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

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

Ambrose Bierce

17.

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

18.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

19.

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

Benn, Tony

20.

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

Truman, Harry S

21.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

22.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

26.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

27.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

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

29.

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

Plato

30.

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

Charles De Gaulle

31.

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

Churchill, Winston

32.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

33.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

34.

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

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

37.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

38.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

40.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

41.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

42.

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

43.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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 politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

46.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

47.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

49.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

50.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle