Motivational Quotes

Politics

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

- President Barack Obama

Best Quotes about Politics

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Miller, Henry

We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

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

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 hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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.

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

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

Auden, W. H.

You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.

Johnson, Pamela Hansford

10.

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

Rinehart, Dana Gillman

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

Galsworthy, John

13.

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

14.

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

Alfred E. Newman

15.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

16.

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

Lincoln, Abraham

17.

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

18.

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

19.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Major, John

20.

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

Greeley, Horace

21.

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

22.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Bush, George

24.

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

Rogers, Will

25.

A politician divides mankind into two classes; tools and enemies.

Fredrich

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Will, George F.

30.

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

Seneca

31.

Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Adams, Henry Brooks

32.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

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.

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

Aristotle

35.

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

Blake, William

36.

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.

Langley, Edward

37.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Cooper, James F.

38.

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

Shakespeare, William

39.

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

Bolingbroke, Henry

40.

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

Taft, William Howard

41.

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

Parkinson, Cecil

42.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Bismarck, Otto Von

43.

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.

44.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

President Barack Obama

45.

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

46.

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

Rostand, Jean

47.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Colby, Frank Moore

48.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery

50.

No party is as bad as its leaders.

Rogers, Will