Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

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

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

Albert Einstein

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

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

Roche, John P.

10.

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

Cooper, James F.

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

Greeley, Horace

14.

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

15.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

16.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

17.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

18.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

19.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

21.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

23.

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

24.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

25.

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

Will, George F.

26.

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

Nathan, George Jean

27.

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

Heine, Heinrich

28.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

29.

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

30.

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

Benn, Tony

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

34.

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

35.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

36.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

37.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

38.

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

Rogers, Will

39.

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

40.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

41.

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

Will, George F.

42.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

43.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

44.

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

45.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

46.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

47.

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

Bryan, William Jennings

48.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

49.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.