Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

- Lowman, Hariold

Best Quotes about Politics

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

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

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

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

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

Dane, Frank

10.

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

Wilde, Oscar

11.

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

Welles, Orson

12.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

16.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

17.

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

Russell, Dora

18.

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

19.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

20.

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.

21.

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

Marquis, Don

22.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

23.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

24.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

25.

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

Horace

26.

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

27.

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

28.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

29.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

30.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

31.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

32.

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.

33.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

34.

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

Tweed, Boss

35.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

36.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

38.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

39.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

40.

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

41.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

42.

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

43.

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

44.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

45.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

46.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

47.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

48.

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

Benn, Tony

49.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

50.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin