Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

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

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

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

Halifax, Edward F.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

10.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

11.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

12.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

13.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

14.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

15.

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

16.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

17.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

18.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

19.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

20.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

21.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

24.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

25.

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.

26.

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.

27.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

Mitchell, George J.

33.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

34.

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

Russell, Dora

35.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

36.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

37.

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.

38.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

39.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

40.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

41.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

42.

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.

43.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

44.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

45.

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

Dane, Frank

46.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

47.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

48.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

49.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

50.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy