Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Thatcher, Margaret

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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.

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

Bacon, Francis

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

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

Churchill, Winston

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

Bagehot, Walter

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

11.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

15.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

16.

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

17.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

18.

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.

19.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

20.

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.

21.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

22.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

23.

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

Rogers, Will

24.

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

Kissinger, Henry

25.

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

26.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

27.

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

28.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

29.

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

Taft, William Howard

30.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

31.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

32.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

33.

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

34.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

35.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

36.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

37.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

38.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

39.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

40.

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.

41.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

42.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

43.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

45.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

46.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

47.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

48.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

49.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

50.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin