Motivational Quotes

Politics

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

- President Barack Obama

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

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

Will, George F.

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

Paul Valery

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.

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

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

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.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

10.

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

11.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

12.

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

13.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

14.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

15.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

16.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

18.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

19.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

27.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

28.

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

Naito, Fern

29.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

30.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

31.

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

32.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

33.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

34.

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

Russell, Dora

35.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

36.

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

37.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

38.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

39.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

43.

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

44.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

46.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

47.

I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Gaulle, Charles De

48.

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.

49.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

50.

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