Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is the art of the next best.

- Bismarck, Otto Von

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Mark B. Cohen

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

Churchill, Winston

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

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

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

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

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

Jefferson, Thomas

10.

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

Rogers, Will

11.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

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

Deighton, Len

13.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

20.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

21.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

22.

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

Russell, Dora

23.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

27.

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

28.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

29.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

30.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

31.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

32.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

33.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

34.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

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

Field, Franklin

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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

38.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

39.

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

40.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

41.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

42.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

43.

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.

44.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

45.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

46.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

47.

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

Tweed, Boss

48.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

49.

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

50.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.