Motivational Quotes

Politics

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

- Roche, John P.

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Bagehot, Walter

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

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.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

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

Macmillan, Harold

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

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

13.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Jefferson, Thomas

14.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

15.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

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.

17.

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.

18.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

19.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

20.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

21.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

22.

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

Will, George F.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

26.

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

27.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

28.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

29.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

30.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

31.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

32.

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

Herriot, Edouard

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

36.

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

37.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

39.

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

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

40.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

41.

In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.

Parkinson, Cecil

42.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

43.

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

Churchill, Winston

44.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

45.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

46.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

47.

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

48.

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

Reagan, Ronald

49.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

50.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles