Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Kissinger, Henry

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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.

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

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

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

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

Hearst, William Randolph

10.

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

Bagehot, Walter

11.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

12.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

13.

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

Will, George F.

14.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

15.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

16.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

18.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

22.

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

Shakespeare, William

23.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Churchill, Winston

25.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

26.

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

Lowman, Hariold

27.

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

Grant, Amy

28.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

29.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

30.

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

Broun, Heywood

31.

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

Swift, Jonathan

32.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

33.

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

Roche, John P.

34.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

35.

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

Cannon, Joseph

36.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

37.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

38.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

41.

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

42.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

43.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

44.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

45.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

46.

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

47.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

49.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

50.

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