Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

- Lester B. Pearson

Best Quotes about Politics

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

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

Benn, Tony

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

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

Rogers, Will

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

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.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

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

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

10.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

11.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

12.

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

Mark B. Cohen

13.

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

14.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

15.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Hubbard, Kin

17.

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

18.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

19.

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

20.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

21.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

22.

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

Lowman, Hariold

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.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

26.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

27.

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

28.

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

29.

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

Rostand, Jean

30.

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

31.

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

Noonan, Peggy

32.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

33.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

34.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

35.

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.

36.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

37.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Marx, Karl

38.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

Nunn, Gregory

43.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

44.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

45.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

46.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

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