Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Major, John

Best Quotes about 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

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

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

Plato

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

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

Rogers, Will

10.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

11.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

12.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

13.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

14.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

15.

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

16.

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

Mitchell, George J.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

20.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

22.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

23.

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

24.

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

25.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

28.

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.

29.

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

Hubbard, Kin

30.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

31.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

32.

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

Mark B. Cohen

33.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

34.

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

Higgins, George V.

35.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

36.

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

37.

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

Eban, Abba

38.

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

39.

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

Roche, John P.

40.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

41.

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

Orwell, George

42.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

43.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

44.

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

45.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

46.

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

47.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

48.

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

49.

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

Will, George F.

50.

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