Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Hubbard, Kin

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

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

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.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

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

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

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

10.

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

Cooper, James F.

11.

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.

12.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

13.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

14.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

15.

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

16.

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

Brown, Jerry

17.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

18.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

19.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

20.

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

Byrne, Robert

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

25.

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

Berra, Yogi

26.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

27.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

28.

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

29.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

30.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

31.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

32.

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.

33.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

34.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

35.

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

Mark B. Cohen

36.

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

Eban, Abba

37.

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

Larry Hardiman

38.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

39.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

43.

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

44.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

45.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

46.

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

Roche, John P.

47.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.