Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Politics

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

Tweed, Boss

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

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

Plato

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

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

Kempton, Murray

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

Fredrich

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

14.

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

Mark B. Cohen

15.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

17.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

18.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

23.

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

Benn, Tony

24.

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

25.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

26.

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

27.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

28.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Will, George F.

32.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

33.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

34.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

35.

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

36.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

37.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

38.

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

Rogers, Will

39.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

40.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

41.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

42.

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

Bagehot, Walter

43.

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

Mencken, H. L.

44.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

45.

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

Churchill, Winston

46.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

47.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

President Barack Obama

48.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

49.

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

50.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold