Motivational Quotes

Politics

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

- Baudrillard, Jean

Best Quotes about Politics

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

Churchill, Winston

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

Noonan, Peggy

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

10.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

11.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

15.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

16.

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

17.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

18.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

19.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

20.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

21.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

22.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

23.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

24.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

25.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

26.

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

Naito, Fern

27.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

28.

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

Arbuthnot, John

29.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

30.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

31.

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

Seneca

32.

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

33.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

34.

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.

35.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

36.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

37.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

38.

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

39.

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

Tweed, Boss

40.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

41.

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

Jackson, Jesse

42.

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.

43.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

44.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

45.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

46.

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

47.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

48.

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

Kempton, Murray

49.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

50.

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