Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

Best Quotes about Politics

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

Thoreau, Henry David

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.

Swift, Jonathan

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

Mccarthy, Mary

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.

There are two types of politicians: the ones that are courageous and honest, and the ones that have a steep career.

Kocher, Gerhard

At home you always have to be a politician. When you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

Macmillan, Harold

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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.

10.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

Nkrumah, Kwame

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

Gaulle, Charles De

14.

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

15.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

Greenfield, Meg

16.

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.

17.

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.

18.

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Rogers, Will

19.

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

Clarke, James Freeman

20.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy

21.

Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.

Mitchell, George J.

22.

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

23.

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.

24.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

25.

Politics is not worrying this country one-tenth as much as where to find a parking space.

Rogers, Will

26.

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Heath, Edward

27.

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

28.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

29.

Politics is the profession of those who have neither trade nor art.

Hijazi, Muhammad

30.

The politician is like an acrobat : he keeps his balance By saying the opposite of what he does.

Barres

31.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Huxley, Aldous

32.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott

34.

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

35.

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.

Fischer, John

36.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Jackson, Jesse

37.

Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it is everything.

Noonan, Peggy

38.

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

Chapman, John Jay

39.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

40.

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

Roosevelt, Theodore

41.

There is an increasingly pervasive sense not only of failure, but of futility. The legislative process has become a cruel shell game and the service system has become a bureaucratic maze, inefficient, incomprehensible, and inaccessible.

Richardson, Elliot

42.

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Rogers, Will

43.

When great questions end, little parties begin.

Bagehot, Walter

44.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

45.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

46.

To speak on without saying anything has always been the greatest gift of orators.

Platen

47.

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

48.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Nathan, George Jean

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.

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