Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Ambrose Bierce

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

10.

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

11.

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

Arbuthnot, John

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.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

14.

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

Bagehot, Walter

15.

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

Hattersley, Roy

16.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

17.

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

Macmillan, Harold

18.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

23.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

24.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

25.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

26.

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

27.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

28.

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

29.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

30.

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

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

Hubbard, Kin

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

36.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

37.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

38.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

40.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

41.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

42.

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

Jackson, Jesse

43.

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

Cameron, W. J.

44.

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

Charles De Gaulle

45.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

46.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

47.

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

Benn, Tony

48.

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

Greeley, Horace

49.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

50.

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