Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Kennedy, Joseph

Best Quotes about Politics

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

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

Kissinger, Henry

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

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

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

Dane, Frank

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

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

13.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

14.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

15.

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

Rogers, Will

16.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

17.

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

18.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

19.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

20.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

21.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

25.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

26.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

27.

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.

28.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

29.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

30.

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

31.

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

Fischer, John

32.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Margaret Cho

36.

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

37.

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

Barres

38.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

40.

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

41.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

42.

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.

43.

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

Macmillan, Harold

44.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

45.

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

Will, George F.

46.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

47.

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

48.

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

Rostand, Jean

49.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

50.

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