Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

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

Kennedy, Joseph

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

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

Pell, Claiborne

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

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

Platen

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

10.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

Plato

12.

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

Ephron, Nora

13.

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.

14.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

15.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

16.

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

Rogers, Will

17.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

18.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

19.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

20.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

21.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

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

Jackson, Jesse

23.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

24.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

25.

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

26.

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

27.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

28.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

29.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

30.

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

Will, George F.

31.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

32.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

33.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

34.

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

Arbuthnot, John

35.

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

Russell, Dora

36.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

37.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

38.

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

39.

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

Alfred E. Newman

40.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

41.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

42.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

Charles De Gaulle

47.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

48.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

49.

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

Kissinger, Henry

50.

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