Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

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

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.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

10.

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.

11.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

12.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

13.

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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.

17.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

18.

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

Goldwater, Barry

19.

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

20.

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

Mencken, H. L.

21.

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

22.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

23.

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

24.

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

25.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

26.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

27.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

28.

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

Rogers, Will

29.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

30.

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

Higgins, George V.

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.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

33.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

34.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

35.

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

Russell, Dora

36.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

37.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

38.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

39.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

40.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

41.

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

42.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

43.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

44.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

45.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

46.

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

47.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

48.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

49.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

50.

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