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

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

Will, George F.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

10.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

11.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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.

13.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

14.

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.

15.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

16.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

17.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

18.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

19.

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

20.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

21.

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

22.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

23.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

24.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

25.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

26.

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.

27.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

28.

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

Cameron, W. J.

29.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

30.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

31.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

32.

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

33.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

34.

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.

35.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

36.

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

Fischer, John

37.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

38.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

39.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

40.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

41.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

42.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

43.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

44.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

45.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.