Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Rogers, Will

Best Quotes about Politics

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

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

Mccarthy, Mary

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

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

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

14.

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

15.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

16.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

17.

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

18.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

19.

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

20.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

21.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

22.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

25.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

26.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

27.

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

Mitchell, George J.

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

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

30.

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

31.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

33.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

34.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

35.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

38.

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

Rogers, Will

39.

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.

40.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

41.

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

Jackson, Jesse

42.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

43.

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

Charles De Gaulle

44.

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

Tweed, Boss

45.

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

46.

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

Hubbard, Kin

47.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

48.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

49.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

50.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.