Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

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

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

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

Fischer, John

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

Marquis, Don

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

10.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

11.

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

Rogers, Will

12.

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

13.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

14.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

15.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

16.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

17.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

18.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

20.

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

21.

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

Grant, Amy

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

24.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

25.

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

26.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

27.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

28.

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

29.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

31.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

32.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

33.

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

Hattersley, Roy

34.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

35.

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

36.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

37.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

38.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

39.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

40.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

41.

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

Horace

42.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

43.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

46.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

47.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

48.

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

49.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

50.

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