Motivational Quotes

Politics

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

- Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Marquis, Don

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.

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

Bagehot, Walter

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

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

Lippmann, Walter

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

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

10.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

11.

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

Shakespeare, William

12.

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

13.

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

14.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

15.

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

16.

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

Churchill, Winston

17.

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

18.

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

Certeau, Michel De

19.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

20.

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

Dane, Frank

21.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

22.

Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork.

Lowman, Hariold

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.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

25.

The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished -- it is no longer secure in its instincts.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

26.

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

Fredrich

27.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

28.

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

29.

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.

30.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

31.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

32.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Benn, Tony

36.

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Pope, Alexander

37.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

38.

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

Rogers, Will

39.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

40.

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men.

Kennedy, John F.

41.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

42.

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

43.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

44.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

45.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

46.

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

Noonan, Peggy

47.

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

48.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

49.

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

Orwell, George

50.

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

Macmillan, Harold