Motivational Quotes

Politics

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.

Best Quotes about Politics

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

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.

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.

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

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

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

10.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

11.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

12.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

13.

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

14.

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

15.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

16.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

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

Paul Valery

18.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

19.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

20.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

21.

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

22.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

23.

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

Marquis, Don

24.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

25.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

26.

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

27.

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

28.

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.

29.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

30.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

31.

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.

32.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

33.

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

Rogers, Will

34.

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

35.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

36.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

37.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.

Field, Franklin

38.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

39.

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

40.

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

41.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

42.

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Kissinger, Henry

43.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

45.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

46.

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Charles De Gaulle

47.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

48.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.