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

You need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum wage worker makes in an entire year.

Clinton, Bill

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

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rogers, Will

In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from side to side, thinking they will be more comfortable.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.

Alfred E. Newman

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

Parkinson, Cecil

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

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

10.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

11.

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

Horace

12.

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

13.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Will, George F.

14.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

15.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

16.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

17.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.

Marx, Groucho

18.

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

19.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

20.

You know, what I very well know, that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don't know, you are now selling yourselves to somebody else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying another borough. May God's curse light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel corporation.

Henley, Anthony

21.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

22.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

23.

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

24.

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

Noonan, Peggy

25.

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

26.

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by any facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party man.

Lavater, Johann Kaspar

27.

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

Paul Valery

28.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

29.

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

Cameron, W. J.

30.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

31.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

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.

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

34.

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

Quinton, John

35.

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.

36.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

37.

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

Churchill, Winston

38.

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

Gaitskell, Hugh

39.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

40.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Baudrillard, Jean

41.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

42.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

Baudrillard, Jean

43.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

44.

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

45.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Marx, Karl

46.

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

47.

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

Kempton, Murray

48.

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

Roche, John P.

49.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

50.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Reagan, Ronald