Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar

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

Brown, Jerry

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

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

Benn, Tony

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

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

Jackson, Jesse

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

10.

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

11.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

12.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Swift, Jonathan

16.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

17.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

18.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

19.

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

Churchill, Winston

20.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

21.

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.

22.

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.

23.

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

Byrne, Robert

24.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

25.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

26.

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

27.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

28.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

29.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

30.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

31.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

32.

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.

33.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

34.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

35.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

36.

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

Lowman, Hariold

37.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

38.

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

Platen

39.

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

Fredrich

40.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

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

42.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

43.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

44.

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.

45.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

46.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

47.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

48.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

49.

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

Pell, Claiborne

50.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.