Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

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.

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

Dane, Frank

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

Lowman, Hariold

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

Pell, Claiborne

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.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

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

10.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

11.

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

12.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

13.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

14.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

15.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

16.

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

Marquis, Don

17.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

18.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

19.

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.

20.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

21.

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

Will, George F.

22.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

23.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

24.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

25.

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

26.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

27.

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

28.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

29.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

30.

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

31.

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

Bagehot, Walter

32.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

33.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

34.

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

35.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

36.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

37.

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

Huxley, Aldous

38.

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

Major, John

39.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

40.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

41.

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

Goldwater, Barry

42.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

43.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

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

47.

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

Kempton, Murray

48.

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

49.

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

Herriot, Edouard

50.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.