Motivational Quotes

Politics

No party is as bad as its leaders.

- Rogers, Will

Best Quotes about Politics

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

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

Bagehot, Walter

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.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

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

Lincoln, Abraham

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

Paul Valery

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.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

12.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

13.

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

14.

The word'politics'is derived from the word'poly', meaning'many', and the word'ticks', meaning'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

15.

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

16.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

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

18.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

19.

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

20.

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

Certeau, Michel De

21.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

22.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

23.

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

24.

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

Pell, Claiborne

25.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

29.

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

Napoleon III

30.

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

31.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

Carlyle, Thomas

32.

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

Clough, Arthur Hugh

33.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

34.

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

Tweed, Boss

35.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

36.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

37.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

38.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

39.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

40.

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

41.

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

Halifax, Edward F.

42.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

43.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

44.

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

45.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

46.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

47.

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

Eban, Abba

48.

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.

49.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

50.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin