Motivational Quotes

Politics

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

- Wilson, Woodrow T.

Best Quotes about Politics

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Bradlee, Ben C.

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

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Wilde, Oscar

Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide.

Kennedy, Joseph

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Arbuthnot, John

Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

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

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

Heine, Heinrich

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.

10.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

11.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

12.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Kissinger, Henry

13.

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

Berra, Yogi

14.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

Bagehot, Walter

15.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

Armey, Dick

16.

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

Marquis, Don

17.

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

18.

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

19.

The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.

Seneca

20.

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

Quinton, John

21.

As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.

Ephron, Nora

22.

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

Lowman, Hariold

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

Rogers, Will

25.

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

Herriot, Edouard

26.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

27.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities -- that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

28.

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

Cannon, Joseph

29.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

30.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

31.

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

32.

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

Shakespeare, William

33.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Churchill, Winston

34.

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

Rogers, Will

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Johnson, Lyndon B.

39.

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.

40.

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

41.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

White, Elwyn Brooks

42.

People start parades -- politicians just get out in front and act like they're leading.

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

43.

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.

44.

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

Paul Valery

45.

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

46.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

47.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

Rostand, Jean

48.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

49.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Koestler, Arthur

50.

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