Motivational Quotes

Politics

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

- Perot, H. Ross

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

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

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

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

Albert Einstein

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

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.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Churchill, Winston

12.

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.

13.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

14.

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

15.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

16.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

17.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

Rogers, Will

19.

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

20.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

21.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

22.

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

Marquis, Don

23.

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.

24.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

25.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

26.

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

27.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

28.

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.

29.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

30.

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

Russell, Dora

31.

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

32.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

33.

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

Lowman, Hariold

34.

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

35.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

36.

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

Hubbard, Kin

37.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

38.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

39.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

40.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

42.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

43.

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.

44.

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

Churchill, Winston

45.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

46.

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

47.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

48.

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

Will, George F.

49.

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

50.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset