Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

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.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Naito, Fern

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

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

10.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

11.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

12.

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

Welles, Orson

13.

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

Horace

14.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

15.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

16.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

17.

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

18.

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.

19.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

20.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

21.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

26.

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

27.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

28.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

29.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

33.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

34.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

35.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

36.

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

37.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Noonan, Peggy

41.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

42.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

43.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

44.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

45.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

46.

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

Rogers, Will

47.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

48.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

49.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

50.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy