Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

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

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Will, George F.

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

Alfred E. Newman

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

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

10.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

11.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

12.

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

Cannon, Joseph

13.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

14.

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

Platen

15.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

16.

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

Churchill, Winston

17.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

21.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

22.

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

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

Rogers, Will

25.

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

Welles, Orson

26.

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

Fredrich

27.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

28.

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

29.

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

Greeley, Horace

30.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

31.

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

Pell, Claiborne

32.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

33.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

34.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

35.

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

Byrne, Robert

36.

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

37.

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

Quinton, John

38.

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

39.

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

Nathan, George Jean

40.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

41.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

42.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

43.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

44.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

45.

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

46.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

47.

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.

48.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

49.

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

50.

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.