Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

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

Gaulle, Charles De

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

Brogan, Denis E.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

10.

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

Quinton, John

11.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

12.

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.

13.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

14.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

15.

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

16.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

17.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

18.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

19.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

21.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

22.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

26.

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

27.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

28.

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

29.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

30.

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

Brown, Jerry

31.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

32.

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

33.

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

Bagehot, Walter

34.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

35.

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

36.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

37.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

41.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

43.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

44.

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

Kissinger, Henry

45.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

46.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

47.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

48.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

49.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

50.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.