Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

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

Rogers, Will

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

Bevan, Aneurin

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Dane, Frank

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

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

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

Mark B. Cohen

10.

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.

11.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

12.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

13.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

14.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

15.

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

Kissinger, Henry

16.

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.

17.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

18.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

19.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

20.

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

21.

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

Naito, Fern

22.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

23.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

24.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

25.

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

26.

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

Brown, Jerry

27.

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

28.

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

Cannon, Joseph

29.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

30.

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

31.

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

Major, John

32.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

33.

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

34.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

35.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

36.

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

37.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

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

Byrne, Robert

39.

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

40.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

41.

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

42.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

43.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

45.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.