Motivational Quotes

Politics

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

- Tocqueville, Alexis De

Best Quotes about Politics

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

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

Nathan, George Jean

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

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.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

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

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

10.

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

Nunn, Gregory

11.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

12.

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.

13.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

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.

15.

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

Quinton, John

16.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

17.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

18.

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

Brown, Jerry

19.

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

20.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

21.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

22.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

23.

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

Dane, Frank

24.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

25.

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

26.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

27.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

28.

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

29.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

30.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

31.

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

Will, George F.

32.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

33.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

34.

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

Pell, Claiborne

35.

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

Roche, John P.

36.

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

Will, George F.

37.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

38.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

39.

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

Paul Valery

40.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

41.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

42.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

43.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

44.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Greeley, Horace

48.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

49.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

50.

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