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

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

Bagehot, Walter

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

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.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

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

Dane, Frank

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

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Plato

10.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

11.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

12.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

13.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

14.

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

Will, George F.

15.

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.

16.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

17.

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

18.

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

19.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

21.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

22.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

23.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

27.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

28.

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

Barres

29.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

30.

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

31.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

32.

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

Greeley, Horace

33.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

34.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

35.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

36.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

37.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

38.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

39.

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

40.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

44.

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

Herriot, Edouard

45.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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.

47.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

49.

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

50.

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