Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

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

Horace

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

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.

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

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

10.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

11.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

12.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

13.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

14.

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

15.

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

Plato

16.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

17.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

18.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

19.

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

Will, George F.

20.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

21.

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

22.

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

Benn, Tony

23.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

24.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

25.

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

26.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

27.

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

28.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

29.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

30.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

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.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

33.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

34.

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.

35.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

36.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

37.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

38.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

40.

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

Macmillan, Harold

41.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

42.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

43.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

44.

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

Herriot, Edouard

45.

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