Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Jefferson, Thomas

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Bagehot, Walter

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

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.

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

Fischer, John

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

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

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

Kissinger, Henry

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

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.

10.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

11.

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

12.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

13.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

14.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

16.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

17.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

18.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

19.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

20.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

21.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

22.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

23.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

24.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

25.

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

26.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

27.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

28.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

29.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

30.

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

Benn, Tony

31.

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.

32.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

33.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

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

36.

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

37.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

38.

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

Higgins, George V.

39.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

40.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

41.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

42.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

43.

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

44.

You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!

Trotsky, Leon

45.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

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

Cameron, W. J.

47.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

48.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

49.

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

50.

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.