Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

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

Kissinger, Henry

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

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

Will, George F.

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

10.

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

11.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

12.

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

13.

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

Marquis, Don

14.

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

Cameron, W. J.

15.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Fredrich

17.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

18.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

19.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

20.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

21.

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

22.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

23.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

24.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

25.

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.

26.

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

Seneca

27.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

28.

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.

29.

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

Alfred E. Newman

30.

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

Tweed, Boss

31.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

32.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

37.

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

Horace

38.

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

Bagehot, Walter

39.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

40.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

41.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

42.

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

43.

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

Macmillan, Harold

44.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

45.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

Mcluhan, Marshall

46.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

47.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.

Baruch, Bernard M.

48.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

49.

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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