Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

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.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

10.

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

Rogers, Will

11.

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

12.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

13.

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

14.

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.

15.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

16.

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

Byrne, Robert

17.

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

18.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

19.

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.

20.

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

Dane, Frank

21.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

22.

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

Cameron, W. J.

23.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

24.

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

Ambrose Bierce

25.

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

Field, Franklin

26.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

27.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

28.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

29.

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.

30.

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

Heine, Heinrich

31.

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

Barres

32.

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

Horace

33.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

34.

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.

35.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

36.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

37.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

38.

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

Pepper, Claude D.

39.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

40.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

41.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

42.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

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.

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

45.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

Kempton, Murray

47.

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.

48.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

49.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

50.

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