Motivational Quotes

Politics

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

- Langley, Edward

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

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

Bryan, William Jennings

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

10.

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

11.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

12.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

13.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

14.

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

15.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

16.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

17.

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

18.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

19.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

20.

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

21.

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

Rogers, Will

22.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

23.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

24.

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

25.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

26.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

27.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

28.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

29.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

30.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

31.

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.

32.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

33.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

34.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

35.

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

36.

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

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.

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

39.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

41.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

43.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

44.

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

Broun, Heywood

45.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

46.

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

47.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

48.

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

49.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

50.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl