Motivational Quotes

Politics

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

- Rich, Adrienne

Best Quotes about Politics

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

Paul Valery

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

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

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

10.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

11.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

12.

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

13.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

17.

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

18.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

19.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

20.

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

21.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

22.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

23.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

24.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

25.

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

Cary, Joyce

26.

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

27.

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

Heine, Heinrich

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

33.

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

34.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

35.

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

Bagehot, Walter

36.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

37.

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

38.

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

Rostand, Jean

39.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

40.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

41.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

42.

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

43.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

47.

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

Jackson, Jesse

48.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

49.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

50.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.