Motivational Quotes

Politics

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

- Trotsky, Leon

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

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

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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

Pell, Claiborne

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

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

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

Will, George F.

10.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

11.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

12.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

13.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

14.

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.

15.

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

Platen

16.

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

Will, George F.

17.

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

Roche, John P.

18.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

21.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

22.

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

23.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

24.

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

Cameron, W. J.

25.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

26.

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.

27.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

28.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

29.

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.

30.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

31.

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

32.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

36.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

38.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

39.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

40.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

41.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

43.

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

44.

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

Swift, Jonathan

45.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

46.

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

Kissinger, Henry

47.

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