Motivational Quotes

Politics

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

- Clark, Alan

Best Quotes about Politics

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

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

Eban, Abba

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

Peter, Laurence J.

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

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.

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.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

Byrne, Robert

Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick.

Taft, William Howard

10.

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

Alfred E. Newman

11.

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

Weber, Max

12.

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

Nixon, Richard M.

13.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

15.

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

Pitt, Martin

16.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

Roosevelt, Theodore

17.

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

18.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

19.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

20.

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

21.

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

Sherman, William T.

22.

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.

23.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

24.

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

25.

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

Weber, Max

26.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Bagehot, Walter

30.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

31.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Brittain, Vera

32.

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

33.

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

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

34.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

35.

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

36.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

Nunn, Gregory

37.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.

Banfield, Edward C.

38.

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

Cannon, Joseph

39.

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

Quinton, John

40.

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.

41.

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

Kissinger, Henry

42.

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

Plato

43.

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

44.

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

Pell, Claiborne

45.

Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Macaulay, Lord

46.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

Mark B. Cohen

47.

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

Berra, Yogi

48.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

Maugham, W. Somerset

49.

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

Truman, Harry S

50.

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

Russell, Dora