Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Kirkpatrick, Jeane

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Bagehot, Walter

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

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

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

Grant, Amy

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

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

Cannon, Joseph

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

10.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

11.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

12.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

13.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

14.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

15.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

16.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

17.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

18.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

19.

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

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

20.

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

21.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

22.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

23.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

24.

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

25.

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

Cooper, James F.

26.

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.

27.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

28.

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

29.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

30.

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

31.

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

Berra, Yogi

32.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

33.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

34.

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.

35.

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

Nunn, Gregory

36.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

37.

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

Cameron, W. J.

38.

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

Kissinger, Henry

39.

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

Naito, Fern

40.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

42.

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

Herriot, Edouard

43.

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

Reagan, Ronald

44.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

45.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

46.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

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.

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

49.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

50.

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