Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Higgins, George V.

Best Quotes about Politics

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

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

Higgins, George V.

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.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

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

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

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

10.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

11.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

12.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

13.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

14.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

15.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

16.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

17.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

18.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

19.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

20.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

21.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

22.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

23.

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

Benn, Tony

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

27.

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

Rogers, Will

28.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

30.

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

31.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

32.

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

Benn, Tony

33.

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

34.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

35.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

36.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

37.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

38.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

39.

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

Naito, Fern

40.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

45.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

46.

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

Heine, Heinrich

47.

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

48.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

49.

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.

50.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert