Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is applesauce.

- Will Rogers

Best Quotes about Politics

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

Rogers, Will

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 is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

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.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

10.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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.

12.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

13.

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

14.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

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.

16.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

17.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

18.

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

19.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

20.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

21.

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

22.

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

Quinton, John

23.

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

Churchill, Winston

24.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

25.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

26.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

27.

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

Will, George F.

28.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

29.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

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

Taft, William Howard

31.

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

Will, George F.

32.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

33.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

34.

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

Mitchell, George J.

35.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

36.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

37.

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

Roche, John P.

38.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

39.

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

40.

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

Bagehot, Walter

41.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

42.

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.

43.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

44.

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

45.

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

Dane, Frank

46.

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

Macmillan, Harold

47.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

48.

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

49.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

50.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold