Motivational Quotes

Politics

When great questions end, little parties begin.

- Bagehot, Walter

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Wilde, Oscar

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

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

Heine, Heinrich

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

Thatcher, Margaret

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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

Truman, Harry S

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

10.

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.

11.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

12.

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

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

15.

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.

16.

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.

17.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

18.

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

Marquis, Don

19.

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

Will, George F.

20.

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

21.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

22.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

23.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

24.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

25.

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

Ambrose Bierce

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Kissinger, Henry

29.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

30.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

31.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

32.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

33.

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

34.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

35.

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

Cooper, James F.

36.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

37.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

38.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

39.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

40.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

41.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

42.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

43.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

44.

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

Cary, Joyce

45.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

46.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

47.

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

Bacon, Francis

48.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

49.

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.

50.

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