Motivational Quotes

Politics

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

- Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

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

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

Russell, Dora

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Swift, Jonathan

10.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

11.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

13.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

14.

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

Hubbard, Kin

15.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

16.

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

Hubbard, Kin

17.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

18.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

19.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

20.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

21.

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

22.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

23.

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

Bagehot, Walter

24.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

25.

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.

26.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

27.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

28.

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.

29.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

30.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

31.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

32.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

33.

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

Cameron, W. J.

34.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

38.

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

39.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

40.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

42.

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

43.

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

44.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

45.

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

Albert Einstein

46.

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

Heine, Heinrich

47.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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