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

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

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

Clough, Arthur Hugh

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

Naito, Fern

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

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

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

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

Truman, Harry S

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

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

10.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

11.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

12.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

13.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

14.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

15.

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.

16.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

17.

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

Shakespeare, William

18.

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

19.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

20.

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

21.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

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.

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

24.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

25.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

26.

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

Bagehot, Walter

27.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

28.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

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

Will, George F.

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

31.

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

32.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

33.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

36.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

37.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

38.

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

Albert Einstein

39.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

40.

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

41.

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

Clarke, James Freeman

42.

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.

43.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

44.

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

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.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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