Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Paul Valery

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Heine, Heinrich

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

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

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

Mitchell, George J.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

10.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

11.

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.

12.

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.

13.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

14.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

15.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

16.

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

17.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

18.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

20.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

21.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

22.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

23.

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

Alfred E. Newman

24.

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

Huxley, Aldous

25.

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

Aristotle

26.

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

Marquis, Don

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Churchill, Winston

30.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

31.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

32.

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

Jackson, Jesse

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

36.

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

37.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

38.

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.

39.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

40.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

41.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

42.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

43.

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

Lowman, Hariold

44.

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

45.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

46.

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

Bush, George

47.

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

48.

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

49.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

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