Motivational Quotes

Politics

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

- Stevenson, Adlai E.

Best Quotes about Politics

I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.

Bryan, William Jennings

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

Lincoln, Abraham

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're gonna get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

Higgins, George V.

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

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

Rogers, Will

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

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

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

Rogers, Will

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

Adams, Henry Brooks

10.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

Bryce, James

11.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Landor, Walter Savage

12.

Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.

Nixon, Richard M.

13.

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

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

14.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Ashdown, Paddy

15.

Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.

Mondale, Walter F.

16.

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

Alfred E. Newman

17.

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.

Hazlitt, William

18.

As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

Marx, Karl

19.

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

20.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Thatcher, Margaret

21.

Once you run for office, you're in it -- sort of like going into the military. You'd better be damned sure it is what you want to do and that the rest of your life is set up to accommodate that. It takes a certain toll on your personality and on your family life. I've seen it personally.

Kennedy Jr., John F.

22.

In war you can be killed only once. In politics, many times.

Churchill, Winston

23.

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.

24.

A politician will do anything to keep his job, even become a patriot.

Hearst, William Randolph

25.

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

26.

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

27.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

Asquith, Margot

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.

Nash, Ogden

31.

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

Certeau, Michel De

32.

Politics is a profession where the paths of glory lead but to the gravy.

Franklin, Billy Boy

33.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Anouilh, Jean

34.

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

35.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

Major, John

36.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

37.

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

Charles De Gaulle

38.

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

Greeley, Horace

39.

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.

40.

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

Shakespeare, William

41.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

42.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

43.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Mcewan, Ian

44.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

Kennedy, John F.

45.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Henry Cate VII

46.

Any established village; could afford a town drunkard, a town atheist, and a few Democrats.

Brogan, Denis E.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

Morley, John

50.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.