Motivational Quotes

Politics

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

- Chapman, John Jay

Best Quotes about Politics

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

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

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

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.

10.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

12.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

13.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

14.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

15.

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

16.

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

Tweed, Boss

17.

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

18.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

19.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

20.

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

21.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

22.

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

Mark B. Cohen

23.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

24.

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

Brown, Jerry

25.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

26.

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.

27.

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

Kissinger, Henry

28.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

29.

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

Margaret Cho

30.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

31.

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

Charles De Gaulle

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

34.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

35.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

36.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

37.

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

Macmillan, Harold

38.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

40.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

41.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

42.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

43.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

44.

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

Welles, Orson

45.

Chapman, John Jay

46.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich