Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

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

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Truman, Harry S

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

10.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

11.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

12.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

13.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

14.

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

15.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

16.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

17.

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

Rogers, Will

18.

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.

Macmillan, Harold

19.

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.

20.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

21.

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

22.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

23.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

24.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

25.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

26.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

27.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

28.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

29.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

30.

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

Plato

31.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

32.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

33.

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

Clough, Arthur Hugh

34.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

35.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

36.

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

37.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

38.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

40.

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

Berra, Yogi

41.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

42.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

43.

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.

44.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

45.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

46.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

47.

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.

48.

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

Rogers, Will

49.

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

Benn, Tony

50.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston