Motivational Quotes

Politics

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Jackson, Jesse

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

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

Fischer, John

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

Kissinger, Henry

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

Hubbard, Kin

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

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.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

10.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

11.

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

Rostand, Jean

12.

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

13.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

14.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

15.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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.

19.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

20.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

21.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

22.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

23.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

24.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

25.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

26.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

27.

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

Rogers, Will

28.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

33.

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

34.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

35.

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

36.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

37.

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

38.

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

39.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

40.

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

Bagehot, Walter

41.

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

42.

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.

43.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

44.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

45.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

46.

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

Platen

47.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

48.

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