Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

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

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

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

10.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

11.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

12.

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

Quinton, John

13.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

14.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

15.

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

16.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

17.

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

18.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

19.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

20.

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

21.

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

22.

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

Rogers, Will

23.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

24.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

25.

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

Kissinger, Henry

26.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

27.

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

28.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

29.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

30.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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

Pell, Claiborne

35.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

36.

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

Taft, William Howard

37.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

38.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

39.

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.

40.

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

Noonan, Peggy

41.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

42.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

43.

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

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

46.

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

47.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

48.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

49.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

50.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII