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

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

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

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

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

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

Benn, Tony

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

10.

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.

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.

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

Charles De Gaulle

13.

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

Albert Einstein

14.

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

Hubbard, Kin

15.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

16.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

17.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

18.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

21.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

22.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

23.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

24.

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

Goldwater, Barry

25.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

27.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

28.

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

Churchill, Winston

29.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

30.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

31.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

32.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

33.

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

Brown, Jerry

34.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

36.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

37.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

38.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

39.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

40.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

41.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

42.

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

43.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

44.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

45.

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

46.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

47.

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

Aristotle

48.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

49.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

50.

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