Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

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

Certeau, Michel De

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.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

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

Aristotle

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

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

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

10.

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

Wilde, Oscar

11.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

12.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

13.

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

Goldwater, Barry

14.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

15.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

16.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

17.

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

Benn, Tony

18.

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.

19.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

20.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

21.

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

Will, George F.

22.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

23.

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.

24.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

25.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

26.

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

27.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

28.

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.

29.

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

Welles, Orson

30.

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

31.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

32.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

33.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

38.

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

39.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

40.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

41.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

42.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

43.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

44.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

45.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

46.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

47.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

48.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

49.

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