Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

Hearst, William Randolph

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

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

Hattersley, Roy

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

10.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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.

12.

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.

13.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

14.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

16.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

17.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

18.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

19.

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

20.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

21.

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

Horace

22.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

23.

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

Bagehot, Walter

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

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.

27.

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

Benn, Tony

28.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

36.

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

37.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

38.

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

Nunn, Gregory

39.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

40.

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

Russell, Dora

41.

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

Will, George F.

42.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

43.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

44.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald

46.

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

47.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

48.

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

Montalbano, Benjamin J.

49.

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

Orwell, George

50.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.