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

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

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

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

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

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

10.

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

Heine, Heinrich

11.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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.

13.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

14.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

15.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

16.

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

17.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

18.

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

19.

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail

20.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

21.

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

Benn, Tony

22.

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

23.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

27.

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.

28.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

29.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

30.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

31.

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

32.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

33.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

34.

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

Hubbard, Kin

35.

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

36.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

38.

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

Lowman, Hariold

39.

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

Barres

40.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

41.

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

42.

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

Byrne, Robert

43.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

44.

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.

45.

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

Nunn, Gregory

46.

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

47.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

48.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

49.

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

Rogers, Will

50.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.