Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

Benn, Tony

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Benn, Tony

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

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.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

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

Kissinger, Henry

10.

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.

11.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

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

Berra, Yogi

13.

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

14.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

16.

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

Rogers, Will

17.

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

18.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

21.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

22.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

23.

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

Field, Franklin

24.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

25.

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.

26.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

27.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

28.

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

29.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

30.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

31.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Rogers, Will

35.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

36.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

37.

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.

38.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

39.

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

40.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

41.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

42.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

43.

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

Eban, Abba

44.

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

45.

Lippmann, Walter

46.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

47.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

48.

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

49.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

50.

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

Brogan, Denis E.