Motivational Quotes

Politics

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

- Albert Einstein

Best Quotes about 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

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

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

Goldwater, Barry

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

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

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

Margaret Cho

10.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

11.

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

Bagehot, Walter

12.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

13.

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

14.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

15.

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

Deighton, Len

16.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

17.

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

18.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

19.

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

20.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

21.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

22.

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

Swift, Jonathan

23.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

27.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

28.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

29.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

30.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

31.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

32.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

33.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

34.

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

35.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

36.

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

Heine, Heinrich

37.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

38.

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

39.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

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

41.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

42.

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.

43.

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

Rogers, Will

44.

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

Fischer, John

45.

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

Quinton, John

46.

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

47.

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

48.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

49.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

50.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman