Motivational Quotes

Politics

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Politics

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.

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

Canning, George

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

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

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

Deighton, Len

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

Rogers, Will

Twain, Mark

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

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

Naito, Fern

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

Clough, Arthur Hugh

10.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

Hubbard, Kin

12.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

13.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

14.

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

15.

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

Mencken, H. L.

16.

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

17.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Aristotle

18.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

19.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

20.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

21.

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Rosenberg, Harold

22.

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

Churchill, Winston

23.

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.

24.

Ignorance makes most men go into a political party, and shame keeps them from getting out of it.

Halifax, Edward F.

25.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

26.

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

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

27.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Heine, Heinrich

28.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

29.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

30.

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

31.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

32.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Will Rogers

33.

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.

34.

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

Nunn, Gregory

35.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

36.

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

37.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

38.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

39.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

42.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

43.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

44.

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

Lowman, Hariold

45.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

46.

Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.

Huxley, Aldous

47.

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

Will, George F.

48.

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

Churchill, Winston

49.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

50.

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

Albert Einstein