Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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.

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

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

Will, George F.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

10.

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

11.

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

Fischer, John

12.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

13.

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

14.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

15.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

16.

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

Rogers, Will

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Brown, Jerry

20.

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

21.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

22.

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

23.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

24.

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

25.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

26.

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

Rogers, Will

27.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

31.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

32.

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

Bagehot, Walter

33.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

34.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

35.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

36.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

37.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

38.

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

39.

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

Hubbard, Kin

40.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

42.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

47.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

48.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

49.

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