Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Galbraith, John Kenneth

Best Quotes about Politics

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

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

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butler

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

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

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

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

Rogers, Will

10.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics -- none in which there is more need of good pilots and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Huxley, Thomas H.

11.

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

Herriot, Edouard

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Bolingbroke, Henry

15.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

George, David Lloyd

17.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

Adams, John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Churchill, Winston

21.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Certeau, Michel De

22.

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

Arbuthnot, John

23.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

24.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

25.

When the political columnists say'Every thinking man'they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to'Every intelligent voter'they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Franklin P. Adams

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

Swift, Jonathan

29.

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland,sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

Dickens, Charles

30.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Twain, Mark

31.

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

Russell, Dora

32.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Byron, Lord

33.

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

Shakespeare, William

34.

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.

35.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith

36.

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

Broun, Heywood

37.

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

38.

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

39.

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Greeley, Horace

40.

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

41.

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

Plato

42.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

Rostand, Jean

43.

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

Culbertson, Ely

44.

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.

45.

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

Margaret Cho

46.

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.

47.

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

Brown, Jerry

48.

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

49.

In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

50.

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.