Motivational Quotes

Politics

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

- Mill, John Stuart

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Welles, Orson

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

Higgins, George V.

10.

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

Cooper, James F.

11.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

12.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

13.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

14.

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

15.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

16.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

18.

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.

19.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

20.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

21.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

22.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

23.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

24.

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

25.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

26.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

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

Nunn, Gregory

28.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

29.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

30.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

31.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

32.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

34.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

35.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

36.

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

37.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

38.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

43.

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.

44.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

45.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

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

Swift, Jonathan

48.

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

49.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

50.

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