Motivational Quotes

Politics

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

- Ehrenreich, Barbara

Best Quotes about Politics

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

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

Pell, Claiborne

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Coolidge, Calvin

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

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

10.

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

Ambrose Bierce

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

14.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

15.

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

Aristotle

16.

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

Paul Valery

17.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

18.

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

19.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

20.

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

Will, George F.

21.

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

22.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

23.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

24.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

25.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

26.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

27.

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

Seneca

28.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

29.

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

Albert Einstein

30.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

31.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

32.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

33.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

34.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

Will, George F.

37.

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.

38.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

39.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

40.

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.

41.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

42.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

43.

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

44.

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

45.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

46.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

47.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

48.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.