Motivational Quotes

Politics

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

- Goldwater, Barry

Best Quotes about Politics

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

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who never loved them.

Shakespeare, William

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

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Aristotle

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

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.

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.

Bacon, Francis

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.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Einstein, Albert

13.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Reagan, Ronald

14.

If you're I politics and you can't tell when you walk into a room who's for you and who's against you, then you're in the wrong line of work.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

15.

The first mistake in public business is going into it.

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

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

17.

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

Herriot, Edouard

18.

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

19.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will

20.

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

Bevan, Aneurin

21.

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

Nunn, Gregory

22.

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

23.

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad.

Johnson, Lyndon B.

24.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

25.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

26.

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

Nixon, Richard M.

27.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Mccarthy, Mary

28.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

29.

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.

30.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

Nixon, Richard M.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

Albert Einstein

34.

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Maugham, W. Somerset

35.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that.

Bush, George

37.

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

38.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

39.

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.

40.

It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.

Goldwater, Barry

41.

Politics is applesauce.

Will Rogers

42.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

43.

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

Margaret Cho

44.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

45.

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

Quinton, John

46.

The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Chapman, John Jay

47.

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

Quayle, Dan

48.

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

Pell, Claiborne

49.

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

50.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth