Motivational Quotes

Politics

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

- Carlyle, Thomas

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

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

Greeley, Horace

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

Will, George F.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

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

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

Churchill, Winston

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

10.

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

11.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

12.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

13.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

14.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

15.

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

Pell, Claiborne

16.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Major, John

26.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

27.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

28.

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

29.

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

Bush, George

30.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

31.

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

Broun, Heywood

32.

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

33.

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

Churchill, Winston

34.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

35.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

36.

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

Alfred E. Newman

37.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

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

40.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

41.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

42.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

43.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

44.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

45.

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

Herriot, Edouard

46.

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

Albert Einstein

47.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

48.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

49.

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

Mark B. Cohen

50.

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