Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Chapman, John Jay

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

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

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

Noonan, Peggy

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

10.

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

11.

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

12.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

13.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

14.

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

Bush, George

15.

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.

16.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

17.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

18.

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

Paul Valery

19.

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

20.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

21.

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.

22.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

23.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

24.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

25.

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

26.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

27.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

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.

29.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

30.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

31.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

32.

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

33.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

34.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

35.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

36.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

37.

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

Russell, Dora

38.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

39.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

40.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

41.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

42.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

43.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

47.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

48.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

49.

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

50.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy