Motivational Quotes

Politics

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

- Gaulle, Charles De

Best Quotes about Politics

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

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

Barres

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

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

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

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

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Bierce, Ambrose

Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.

Jefferson, Thomas

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

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

10.

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

11.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

13.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

Ringer, Robert J.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

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

Marquis, Don

19.

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

20.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

21.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

22.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

23.

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

24.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Eban, Abba

25.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

26.

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato

27.

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

Fredrich

28.

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

29.

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Waugh, Auberon

30.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

31.

Politics makes strange postmasters.

Hubbard, Kin

32.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

33.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

34.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

R. A. Butler

35.

To know your place is a good idea in politics. That is not to say stay in your place or hang on to your place, because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Safire, William

36.

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

37.

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

Mencken, H. L.

38.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Noonan, Peggy

39.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

Amis, Kingsley

40.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Jimmy Wales

41.

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

Naito, Fern

42.

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.

43.

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

Einstein, Albert

44.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

45.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

Roosevelt, Theodore

46.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Camus, Albert

47.

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

Coolidge, Calvin

48.

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.

49.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Benn, Tony