Motivational Quotes

Politics

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

- Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

Best Quotes about Politics

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

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

Cooper, James F.

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

Rogers, Will

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

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

Byrne, Robert

10.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

11.

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

12.

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Madame

13.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

14.

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

Pell, Claiborne

15.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

16.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

17.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

Chapman, John Jay

18.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

19.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Burke, Edmund

20.

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

21.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

22.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

25.

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

26.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

27.

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

28.

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

Noonan, Peggy

29.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

30.

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

Orwell, George

31.

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

32.

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.

33.

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

Charles De Gaulle

34.

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

35.

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

Humphrey, Hubert H.

36.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Mill, John Stuart

37.

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

Benn, Tony

38.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

40.

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

41.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

42.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

43.

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

Paul Valery

44.

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

Peter, Laurence J.

45.

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

46.

I do not look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.

Hubbard, Kin

47.

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

Churchill, Winston

48.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

The house of Lords is a model on how to care for the elderly.