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

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

Broun, Heywood

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

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

Clarke, James Freeman

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes.

Berra, Yogi

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

10.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

O'Rourke, P. J.

11.

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

12.

Politic is going to be diluted down into a ten second window, where you whack the guy as hard as you can and then get out there.

Dixon, Alan

13.

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

14.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

15.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

16.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

18.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

19.

If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.

Grant, Amy

20.

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

Horace

21.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

22.

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

23.

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

Churchill, Winston

24.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

25.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

26.

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

Kocher, Gerhard

27.

Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse, and things won't get worse unless they get elected.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

28.

The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them.

Bagehot, Walter

29.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

30.

My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

31.

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

32.

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

Mencken, H. L.

33.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

34.

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

35.

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

Franklin, Billy Boy

36.

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

37.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

38.

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Hattersley, Roy

39.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

40.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

41.

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

42.

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

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

43.

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

44.

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

Sampson, Anthony

45.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

46.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.

Mencken, H. L.

47.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

48.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.