Motivational Quotes

Politics

Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.

- Baudrillard, Jean

Best Quotes about Politics

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

Will, George F.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

Any 20 year-old who isn't a liberal doesn't have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn't a conservative doesn't have a brain.

Churchill, Winston

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.

Plato

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

Quinton, John

In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

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

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.

10.

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

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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.

12.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle

13.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

14.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

15.

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

Robert Louis Stevenson

16.

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

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

17.

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

18.

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

Truman, Harry S

19.

The era of the political was one of anomie: crisis, violence, madness and revolution. The era of the trans-political is that of anomaly: an aberration of no consequence, contemporaneous with the event of no consequence.

Baudrillard, Jean

20.

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Roosevelt, Theodore

21.

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

Churchill, Winston

22.

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

Powell, L. R.

23.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

Goldwater, Barry

24.

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

25.

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

Horace

26.

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

Hubbard, Kin

27.

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

28.

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

Charles De Gaulle

29.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

30.

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

31.

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

Rogers, Will

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Nothing is so foolish, they say, as for a man to stand for office and woo the crowd to win its vote, buy its support with presents, court the applause of all those fools and feel self-satisfied when they cry their approval, and then in his hour of triumph to be carried round like an effigy for the public to stare at, and end up cast in bronze to stand in the market place.

Erasmus, Desiderius

35.

One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Mccarthy, Eugene J.

36.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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.

38.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

39.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

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

Eban, Abba

41.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

President Barack Obama

42.

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.

43.

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

Plato

44.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

45.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

46.

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

47.

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

Pepper, Claude D.

48.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

50.

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

Rostand, Jean