Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

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

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

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

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

Macmillan, Harold

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.

10.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

12.

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

13.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

14.

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

15.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

16.

In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

17.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

18.

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

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

19.

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

20.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

21.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

22.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora

23.

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

24.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

25.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

27.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

28.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

29.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

30.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

31.

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

32.

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

Tweed, Boss

33.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

34.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

35.

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

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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

37.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

38.

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

39.

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

Marquis, Don

40.

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

42.

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

Cannon, Joseph

43.

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.

44.

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

Albert Einstein

45.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

46.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Ambrose Bierce

47.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

48.

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.

49.

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.

50.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks