Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

Gaitskell, Hugh

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

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

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

Cooper, James F.

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

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

Clarke, James Freeman

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

Fuller, R. Buckminster

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

Roche, John P.

10.

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.

11.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

12.

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.

13.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

14.

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

15.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

16.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

17.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

18.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.

Lippmann, Walter

19.

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

20.

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

Clough, Arthur Hugh

21.

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

Macmillan, Harold

22.

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Herriot, Edouard

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Rogers, Will

26.

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Wilson, Harold

27.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Benn, Tony

28.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

29.

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

Churchill, Winston

30.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

31.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

32.

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

33.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

34.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

35.

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

36.

Any man with a fine shock of hair, a good set of teeth, and a bewitching smile can park his brains, if he has any, and run for public office.

37.

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

38.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

39.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

40.

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

42.

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

Will, George F.

43.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

44.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

45.

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

46.

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

Pell, Claiborne

47.

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

48.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

49.

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

Hearst, William Randolph

50.

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