Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Horace

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Barres

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

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

Kennedy, Joseph

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

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.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

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

Bacon, Francis

10.

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

11.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

12.

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

13.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

14.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

15.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

16.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

17.

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

18.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

19.

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

20.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

21.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

22.

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.

23.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

24.

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

25.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

26.

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

Kempton, Murray

27.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

28.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

29.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Eban, Abba

33.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

34.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

35.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

36.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

37.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

38.

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

Grant, Amy

39.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

40.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

41.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

42.

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

43.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

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.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

47.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

49.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

50.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle