Motivational Quotes

Politics

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

- Lippmann, Walter

Best Quotes about Politics

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

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

Eban, Abba

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

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

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Brodie, Fawn M.

10.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

14.

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

15.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

16.

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

17.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

21.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

22.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

23.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

24.

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

25.

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

Rostand, Jean

26.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Arbuthnot, John

33.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

34.

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.

35.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

36.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

37.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

38.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

39.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

40.

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

41.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

42.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

43.

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

44.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

45.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

46.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

47.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

48.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

49.

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

50.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott