Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

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

Jefferson, Thomas

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Mark B. Cohen

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

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

10.

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

Will, George F.

11.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

12.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

13.

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

14.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

15.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

16.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

17.

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

Benn, Tony

18.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

19.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

20.

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

21.

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

Field, Franklin

22.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

23.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

25.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

26.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

27.

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

28.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

29.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

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

31.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

32.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

34.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

35.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

36.

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.

37.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

38.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

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.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

44.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

45.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

46.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

48.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

49.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

50.

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