Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Gaulle, Charles De

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

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

Higgins, George V.

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.

Ameringer, Oscar

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

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

Rogers, Will

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

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

10.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

11.

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

12.

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

13.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

14.

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

15.

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

Brogan, Denis E.

16.

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

17.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

18.

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

19.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

20.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

21.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

22.

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

23.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

24.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

25.

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

Arbuthnot, John

26.

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

Marquis, Don

27.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

28.

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

29.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

30.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

31.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

32.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

33.

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

Bryan, William Jennings

34.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

35.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

36.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

37.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

38.

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

39.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

43.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

44.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

46.

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

Roche, John P.

47.

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

Hubbard, Kin

48.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

49.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.