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

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

Broun, Heywood

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Albert Einstein

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

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

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

Rogers, Will

10.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

11.

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

Wilde, Oscar

12.

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.

13.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

14.

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

Rogers, Will

15.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

16.

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

Bush, George

17.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

18.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Lowman, Hariold

22.

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.

23.

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

Major, John

24.

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

25.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

26.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

27.

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

Cooper, James F.

28.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

29.

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

Dane, Frank

30.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

31.

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

Tweed, Boss

32.

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.

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.

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.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

36.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

37.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

38.

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.

39.

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

Fischer, John

40.

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

41.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

42.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

43.

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

44.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

45.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

46.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

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