Motivational Quotes

Politics

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

- Bush, George

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar

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

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

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

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

10.

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

11.

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

Mencken, H. L.

12.

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

Broun, Heywood

13.

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

14.

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

Plato

15.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

16.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

17.

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.

18.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

19.

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

Field, Franklin

20.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

22.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

23.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

24.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

26.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

27.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

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

Jackson, Jesse

29.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

30.

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.

31.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

32.

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

Mitchell, George J.

33.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

34.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

35.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

36.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

37.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

38.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

39.

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

Charles De Gaulle

40.

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

Tweed, Boss

41.

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

42.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

43.

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

44.

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

45.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

46.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

47.

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

48.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.