Motivational Quotes

Politics

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

- Clark, Alan

Best Quotes about Politics

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

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

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

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

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 work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

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.

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

Rogers, Will

10.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

11.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

12.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

13.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

Jackson, Jesse

15.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

16.

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

Mark B. Cohen

17.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

18.

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

Broun, Heywood

19.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

20.

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

Greeley, Horace

21.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

22.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

23.

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

Pell, Claiborne

24.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

25.

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

26.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

27.

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

Alfred E. Newman

28.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

29.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

30.

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

31.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

32.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

33.

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.

34.

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.

35.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

36.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

37.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

38.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

39.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

40.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

46.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

47.

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.

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Swift, Jonathan