Motivational Quotes

Politics

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

- Johnson, Pamela Hansford

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

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

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

Brown, Jerry

10.

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

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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.

13.

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

Plato

14.

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

15.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

16.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

17.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

18.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

19.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

20.

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.

21.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

22.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

23.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

24.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

25.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

26.

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

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

29.

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

Mencken, H. L.

30.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

31.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

32.

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

33.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

34.

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

35.

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

Grant, Amy

36.

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

Will, George F.

37.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

38.

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

39.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

40.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

41.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

43.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

44.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

45.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

46.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

47.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

48.

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

Albert Einstein

49.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

50.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott