Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Bagehot, Walter

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

Greeley, Horace

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

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

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

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

Russell, Dora

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

10.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

11.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

12.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

13.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

14.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

15.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

16.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

21.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

22.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

23.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

24.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

25.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

26.

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

27.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

28.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

29.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

30.

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

31.

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

Eban, Abba

32.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

36.

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.

37.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

38.

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

39.

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

Benn, Tony

40.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

41.

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

42.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

43.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

44.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

45.

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

46.

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

Albert Einstein

47.

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

Charles De Gaulle

48.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

49.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

50.

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