Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Politics

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Will, George F.

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

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

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

Alfred E. Newman

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

French National Assembly

If there is anything a public servant hates to do it is something for the public.

Hubbard, Kin

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Dalton Camp

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

10.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

11.

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.

12.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

13.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

14.

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

Rostand, Jean

15.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Chapman, John Jay

16.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

17.

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

Cameron, W. J.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

21.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

22.

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

23.

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

Broun, Heywood

24.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

25.

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

26.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Parker, Theodore

27.

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

Rogers, Will

28.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

29.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

30.

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

Seneca

31.

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.

Davis, Angela Y.

32.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Tomlin, Lily

33.

When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale, and I never tried again.

Clinton, Bill

34.

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

35.

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Orwell, George

36.

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

37.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

Watanabe, Michio

38.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

39.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

40.

Honest statesmanship is the wise employment of individual meanness for the public good.

Lincoln, Abraham

41.

Politics is a blood sport.

Bevan, Aneurin

42.

The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.

Anderson, John B.

43.

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

44.

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

Grant, Amy

45.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

46.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

47.

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

Brogan, Denis E.

48.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

49.

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

50.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean