Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

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

Charles De Gaulle

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

Tweed, Boss

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

Roche, John P.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

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

10.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

Fischer, John

14.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

15.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

16.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

17.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

18.

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.

19.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

20.

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.

21.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

22.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

23.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Will, George F.

28.

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

29.

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

Wilde, Oscar

30.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

32.

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

Orwell, George

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.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

35.

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

Hattersley, Roy

36.

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.

37.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

38.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

39.

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.

40.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

42.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

43.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

44.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

45.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

46.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

47.

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

Kissinger, Henry

48.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

49.

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

Aristotle

50.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers