Quotes about politics

"Practical politics consists in ignoring facts."

Adams, Henry Brooks on politics
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"Politics, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds."

Adams, Henry Brooks on politics
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"In politics the middle way is none at all."

Adams, John on politics
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"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other."

Ameringer, Oscar on politics
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"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 on politics   

"The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take."

Anderson, John B. on politics   

"Nothing is irreparable in politics."

Anouilh, Jean on politics
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"All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies."

Arbuthnot, John on politics
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"Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics."

Aristotle on politics   

"What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions."

Aristotle on politics   

"Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody."

Armey, Dick on politics
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"Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace."

Ashdown, Paddy on politics   

"He could not see a belt without hitting below it."

Asquith, Margot on politics   

"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. on politics
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"My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth."

Auden, W. H. on politics
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"It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral."

Bacon, Francis on politics
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"When great questions end, little parties begin."

Bagehot, Walter on politics   

"The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendor of those who eclipsed and preceded them."

Bagehot, Walter on politics   

"A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities."

Bagehot, Walter on politics   

"Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident -- the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society."

Banfield, Edward C. on politics   

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

Barres on politics
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"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. on politics   

"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 on politics   

"Politicians -- power itself -- are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power."

Baudrillard, Jean on politics   

"It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him."

Baudrillard, Jean on politics   

"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 on politics   

"We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values."

Benn, Tony on politics   

"The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians."

Benn, Tony on politics   

"Yogi met George Bush during an election campaign. Bush said Texas was important. Yogi said Texas has a lot of electrical votes."

Berra, Yogi on politics   

"Politics is a blood sport."

Bevan, Aneurin on politics   

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

Bevan, Aneurin on politics   

"What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country."

Bierce, Ambrose on politics   

"Politics is not an exact science."

Bismarck, Otto Von on politics   

"Politics is the art of the next best."

Bismarck, Otto Von on politics   

"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 on politics   

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

Bolingbroke, Henry on politics   

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon on politics
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"In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on politics   

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon on politics   

"I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep."

Borrow, George on politics