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

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

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

Orwell, George

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

Mencken, H. L.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

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

Hattersley, Roy

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

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

Will, George F.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

10.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

11.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

13.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

14.

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

15.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

17.

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

Kempton, Murray

18.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

19.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Mitchell, George J.

25.

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

Shakespeare, William

26.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

27.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

28.

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

Quinton, John

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

31.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

37.

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

38.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

39.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

40.

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

Lieberman, Gerald F.

41.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Ameringer, Oscar

42.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

43.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

44.

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

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.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

47.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

48.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.