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

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

Bagehot, Walter

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Plato

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

10.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

11.

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.

12.

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.

13.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

15.

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

Lowman, Hariold

16.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

17.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

18.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

20.

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.

21.

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

Goldwater, Barry

22.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

23.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar

24.

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

25.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

26.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

27.

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

28.

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

Tweed, Boss

29.

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

Will, George F.

30.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

31.

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

32.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

33.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

35.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

36.

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

37.

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

38.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

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

40.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

41.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

42.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

43.

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

Hubbard, Kin

44.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

45.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

46.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

47.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

48.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

49.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

50.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur