Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

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.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

10.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

11.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

12.

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

13.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

14.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

15.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

16.

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.

17.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

18.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

19.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

21.

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

Mark B. Cohen

22.

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

Plato

23.

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

24.

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

25.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

26.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

27.

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

Jackson, Jesse

28.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

29.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

30.

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

31.

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

Mencken, H. L.

32.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

33.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

34.

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

Brown, Jerry

35.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

36.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

37.

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

Rogers, Will

38.

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

39.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

41.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

42.

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

43.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

44.

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

45.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

46.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

47.

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

Greeley, Horace

48.

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

Charles De Gaulle

49.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

50.

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