Motivational Quotes

Politics

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

- Heine, Heinrich

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

Plato

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

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

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

Rogers, Will

10.

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

11.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

12.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

16.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

17.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

18.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

19.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

20.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

21.

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

22.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

23.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

24.

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

25.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

30.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

31.

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

32.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

33.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

34.

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

Paul Valery

35.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

36.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

37.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

38.

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

39.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

40.

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

41.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

42.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

43.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

44.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.