Motivational Quotes

Politics

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

- Blake, William

Best Quotes about Politics

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Benn, Tony

10.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

11.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

12.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

13.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

14.

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.

15.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

16.

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

Churchill, Winston

17.

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

18.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

19.

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.

20.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

21.

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

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.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

24.

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

25.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

26.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

27.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

28.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

29.

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.

30.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

31.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

32.

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

Fredrich

33.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

34.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

36.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

37.

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

38.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

39.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

40.

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

Noonan, Peggy

41.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

42.

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

43.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

44.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

45.

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.

46.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

47.

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

48.

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

Kempton, Murray

49.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

50.

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