Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Noonan, Peggy

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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.

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

Bush, George

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

Mccarthy, Mary

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

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

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

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

Certeau, Michel De

10.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

11.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

12.

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

Broun, Heywood

13.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

14.

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

15.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

16.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

17.

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.

18.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

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

Mencken, H. L.

20.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

21.

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

Heine, Heinrich

22.

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

23.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

24.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

25.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

26.

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.

27.

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

Orwell, George

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Nathan, George Jean

31.

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

32.

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

33.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

34.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

35.

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

Macmillan, Harold

36.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

37.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

38.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

39.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

40.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

41.

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.

42.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

43.

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

Aristotle

44.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

45.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

50.

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

Ambrose Bierce