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 politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

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

Parkinson, Cecil

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

Halifax, Edward F.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

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

10.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

11.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

12.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

13.

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

Benn, Tony

14.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

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.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

17.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

18.

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

19.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar

20.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

21.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

24.

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

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.

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

27.

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.

28.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

29.

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

Kissinger, Henry

30.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

31.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

32.

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.

33.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

34.

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

35.

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

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

36.

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

Rogers, Will

37.

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

38.

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

39.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

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

41.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

42.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

43.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

44.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

45.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

46.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

47.

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

48.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

49.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

50.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.