Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Dane, Frank

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.

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

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

Mitchell, George J.

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

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

10.

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.

11.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

12.

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

Jackson, Jesse

13.

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

14.

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

Macmillan, Harold

15.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

16.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

19.

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

20.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

21.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

22.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

23.

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

24.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

25.

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

Cary, Joyce

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

29.

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

30.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

31.

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.

32.

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.

33.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

34.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

35.

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

36.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

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.

38.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

40.

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.

41.

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

Mark B. Cohen

42.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

43.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

44.

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

45.

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

46.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

47.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

48.

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

Churchill, Winston

49.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

50.

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