Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Mccarthy, Mary

Best Quotes about Politics

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

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

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

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

Paul Valery

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

10.

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

11.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

12.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

13.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

14.

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

15.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

16.

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

17.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

18.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

19.

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.

20.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

21.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

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

23.

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

Alfred E. Newman

24.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

25.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

26.

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

Brogan, Denis E.

27.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

28.

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

Marquis, Don

29.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

30.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

31.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

32.

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

33.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

34.

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

35.

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

Bagehot, Walter

36.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

37.

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.

38.

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

Kissinger, Henry

39.

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

40.

A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

44.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

45.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

46.

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

47.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

48.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

49.

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

Huxley, Aldous

50.

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