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

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

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, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

Rich, Adrienne

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

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

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

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.

10.

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

Marquis, Don

11.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

12.

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

13.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

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

Huxley, Aldous

15.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

16.

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

Deighton, Len

17.

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

18.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

19.

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

Will, George F.

20.

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

21.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

22.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

23.

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

24.

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

25.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

26.

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

27.

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

28.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

29.

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

30.

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

Seneca

31.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

32.

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.

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.

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

Paul Valery

35.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

36.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

37.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

38.

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

39.

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

Kempton, Murray

40.

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

41.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

42.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

43.

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

44.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

47.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.