Motivational Quotes

Politics

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

- Maugham, W. Somerset

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Kissinger, Henry

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

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

Rogers, Will

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

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

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

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

10.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

11.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

12.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

13.

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

Berra, Yogi

14.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

15.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

16.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Cameron, W. J.

20.

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

Macmillan, Harold

21.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

22.

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.

23.

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

Nunn, Gregory

24.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

28.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

29.

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

Russell, Dora

30.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

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

32.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

33.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Welles, Orson

37.

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

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

38.

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

Certeau, Michel De

39.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

40.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

41.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

42.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

43.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

44.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

Swift, Jonathan

50.

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

Quinton, John