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

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

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

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.

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

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

Fredrich

10.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

11.

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

12.

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

Will Rogers

13.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

14.

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

15.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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.

17.

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

Will, George F.

18.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

19.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

20.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

21.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

22.

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

23.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

24.

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

25.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

26.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

27.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

28.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

29.

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.

30.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

31.

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

Bagehot, Walter

32.

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

Arbuthnot, John

33.

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

Reagan, Ronald

34.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

35.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

36.

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

37.

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

Ambrose Bierce

38.

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

Hubbard, Kin

39.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

46.

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

47.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

48.

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

Horace

49.

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

50.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus