Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

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

Heine, Heinrich

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

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

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

10.

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.

11.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

12.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

13.

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

14.

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

Rogers, Will

15.

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

16.

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

Bagehot, Walter

17.

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

18.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

Churchill, Winston

21.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

22.

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

Rostand, Jean

23.

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

Plato

24.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

25.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

29.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

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

Noonan, Peggy

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Nunn, Gregory

34.

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

35.

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

36.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

37.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

38.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

39.

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

Huxley, Aldous

40.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

41.

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

42.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

43.

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

Mark B. Cohen

44.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

45.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

46.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

47.

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

48.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

49.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

50.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.