Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Roosevelt, Theodore

Best Quotes about Politics

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

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Perot, H. Ross

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

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.

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 politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his conscience longer than he does with his constituents.

Laird, Melvin R.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

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

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

10.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

11.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

12.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

13.

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

Shakespeare, William

14.

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

15.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony

17.

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.

18.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

19.

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

20.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

21.

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

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Platen

24.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

25.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

26.

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Truman, Harry S

27.

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

Churchill, Winston

28.

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

29.

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

Alfred E. Newman

30.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

31.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

32.

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

Orwell, George

33.

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

Herriot, Edouard

34.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

35.

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.

36.

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

Pell, Claiborne

37.

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

38.

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

Mark B. Cohen

39.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

40.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

41.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

42.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

43.

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

44.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

Marquis, Don

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

47.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

48.

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

49.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

50.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore