Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Lincoln, Abraham

Best Quotes about Politics

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

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

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

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.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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.

10.

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

Nunn, Gregory

11.

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

Roche, John P.

12.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

13.

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

Ambrose Bierce

14.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

15.

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.

16.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

17.

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

Heine, Heinrich

18.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

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

20.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

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.

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

23.

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

24.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

25.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

26.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

27.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

28.

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

29.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

30.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

31.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

35.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

36.

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.

37.

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

Certeau, Michel De

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

Rostand, Jean

43.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

47.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

48.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

49.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.