Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

- Mcewan, Ian

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

Goldwater, Barry

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

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

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

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.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Baudrillard, Jean

10.

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.

11.

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

Bagehot, Walter

12.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

13.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

14.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

16.

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

Hubbard, Kin

17.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

18.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

19.

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

Heine, Heinrich

20.

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

Byrne, Robert

21.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

22.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

23.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

24.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

25.

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

Shakespeare, William

26.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

27.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

28.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

29.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

30.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

31.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

32.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

33.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

34.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

35.

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

36.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

37.

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.

38.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

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

Orwell, George

40.

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

Noonan, Peggy

41.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

42.

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

Bryan, William Jennings

43.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

44.

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

45.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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.

47.

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

Nunn, Gregory

48.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

49.

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

50.

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

Albert Einstein