Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Will, George F.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

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

Higgins, George V.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

14.

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.

15.

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.

16.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

17.

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

18.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

19.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

20.

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

Heine, Heinrich

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.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

23.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

24.

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

Kennedy, Joseph

25.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

Roche, John P.

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

30.

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

Brogan, Denis E.

31.

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

32.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

33.

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

34.

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.

35.

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

Shakespeare, William

36.

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

37.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

38.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

39.

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

Taft, William Howard

40.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

41.

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

42.

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

Alfred E. Newman

43.

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

Kissinger, Henry

44.

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

45.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

46.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

47.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

48.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.