Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

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

Alfred E. Newman

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.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

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

Cannon, Joseph

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

12.

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

13.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

14.

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

15.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

19.

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

Paul Valery

20.

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

26.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

27.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

28.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

29.

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

30.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

31.

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

32.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

33.

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

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

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

Certeau, Michel De

36.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn

37.

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

Rostand, Jean

38.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

39.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

40.

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

41.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

42.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

43.

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

Baudrillard, Jean

44.

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

Macmillan, Harold

45.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

46.

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

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

47.

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

48.

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

Huxley, Aldous

49.

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

Truman, Harry S

50.

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