Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

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

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

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

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.

Auden, W. H.

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Kempton, Murray

13.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

Taft, William Howard

15.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

20.

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

Churchill, Winston

21.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

23.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

24.

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

Dane, Frank

25.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

26.

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

Lowman, Hariold

27.

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

Marquis, Don

28.

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

Margaret Cho

29.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

30.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

31.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Bevan, Aneurin

32.

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

Horace

33.

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

Churchill, Winston

34.

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

35.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

36.

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

Swift, Jonathan

37.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Rogers, Will

41.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

42.

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.

43.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.