Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Goldwater, Barry

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Bryan, William Jennings

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

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

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

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

Brogan, Denis E.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

10.

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

11.

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

Roche, John P.

12.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

13.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

14.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

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

Pell, Claiborne

19.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

20.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

21.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

22.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

23.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

24.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

25.

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

26.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

27.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

28.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

29.

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.

30.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

31.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

32.

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

Kempton, Murray

33.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

34.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

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.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

37.

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

Goldwater, Barry

38.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

39.

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

40.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

41.

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

Benn, Tony

42.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

43.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

44.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

45.

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

46.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Horace

50.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius