Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Roosevelt, Theodore

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

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

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

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

Peter, Laurence J.

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

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

Russell, Dora

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

10.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

11.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

12.

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

Wilde, Oscar

13.

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

Lowman, Hariold

14.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

16.

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

Hubbard, Kin

17.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

18.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

19.

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

Paul Valery

20.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

21.

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

22.

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

Noonan, Peggy

23.

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

24.

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

Certeau, Michel De

25.

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

Heine, Heinrich

26.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

27.

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

28.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

29.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

30.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

31.

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.

32.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

33.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

34.

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

Goldwater, Barry

35.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

36.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

37.

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.

38.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

40.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

41.

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

Greeley, Horace

42.

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.

43.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

44.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

45.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

46.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

47.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

48.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

49.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

50.

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