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

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

Naito, Fern

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

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.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

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

Berra, Yogi

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

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.

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

Benn, Tony

12.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

13.

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

14.

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

Broun, Heywood

15.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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

17.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

18.

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

Bagehot, Walter

19.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

20.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

21.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

22.

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

Kissinger, Henry

23.

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

24.

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

Brown, Jerry

25.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

26.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

27.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

28.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

29.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

30.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

31.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

32.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

33.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

34.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

35.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

36.

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

37.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

38.

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

Albert Einstein

39.

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

Byrne, Robert

40.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

41.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

42.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

43.

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

44.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

45.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

46.

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

47.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

48.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

49.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

50.

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