Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Kissinger, Henry

Best Quotes about Politics

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

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

Barres

10.

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

11.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

12.

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.

13.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

14.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

15.

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

16.

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

Ephron, Nora

17.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

18.

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

19.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

20.

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

Jackson, Jesse

21.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

22.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

23.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

24.

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

Eban, Abba

25.

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

Ambrose Bierce

26.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

27.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

28.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

29.

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

30.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

31.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Swift, Jonathan

36.

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

37.

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

Cameron, W. J.

38.

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

Dane, Frank

39.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

40.

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

41.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

42.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

43.

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

44.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

48.

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

Cooper, James F.

49.

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

Benn, Tony

50.

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