Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

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

Paul Valery

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

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

Bagehot, Walter

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

Huxley, Aldous

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

Deighton, Len

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.

Marx, Karl

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

10.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

11.

It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Junius

12.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

13.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

14.

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

15.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

16.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

Cary, Joyce

17.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

18.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

19.

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

Charles De Gaulle

20.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

21.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

22.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

Clough, Arthur Hugh

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

Forbes, Malcolm S.

25.

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

Rogers, Will

26.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

31.

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.

32.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Welles, Orson

33.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

34.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

35.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

36.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Clark, Alan

37.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

38.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

39.

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

40.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

41.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

42.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

43.

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

44.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

45.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Lippmann, Walter

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.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

48.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

49.

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

Hijazi, Muhammad

50.

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