Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is the art of the next best.

- Bismarck, Otto Von

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

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.

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

Heine, Heinrich

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

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

13.

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

14.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

15.

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

16.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

17.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

18.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

19.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

20.

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

21.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

24.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

25.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

29.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

30.

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

31.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

32.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

33.

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

34.

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

Field, Franklin

35.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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

Truman, Harry S

38.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

39.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

40.

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

Russell, Dora

41.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

42.

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

43.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

44.

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

45.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

46.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

47.

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

48.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

49.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

50.

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