Quotes about politics

In politics the middle way is none at all.

— John Adams

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.

— Oscar Ameringer

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.

— Kingsley Amis

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.

— John B. Anderson

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

— Jean Anouilh

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

— John Arbuthnot

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

— Aristotle

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

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

— Dick Armey

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

— Paddy Ashdown

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

— Margot Asquith

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.

— W. H. Auden

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.

— W. H. Auden

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

— Francis Bacon

When great questions end, little parties begin.

— Walter Bagehot

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.

— Walter Bagehot

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

— Walter Bagehot

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.

— Edward C. Banfield

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

— Barres

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.

— Bernard M. Baruch

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.

— Jean Baudrillard

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.

— Jean Baudrillard

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

— Jean Baudrillard

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.

— Jean Baudrillard

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

— Tony Benn

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

— Tony Benn

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

— Yogi Berra

Politics is a blood sport.

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

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.

— Ambrose Bierce

Politics is not an exact science.

— Otto Von Bismarck

Politics is the art of the next best.

— Otto Von Bismarck

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.

— William Blake

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

— Henry Bolingbroke

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— George Borrow

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

— Ben C. Bradlee

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

— Vera Brittain

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

— Fawn M. Brodie

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

— Denis E. Brogan

A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins.

— Heywood Broun

It doesn't matter what I say as long as I sound different from other politicians.

— Jerry Brown

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

— William Jennings Bryan

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.

— James Bryce

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

— Edmund Burke

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

— Edmund Burke

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

— Edmund Burke

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

— Edmund Burke

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

— George Bush

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

— Robert Byrne

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.

— Lord Byron

An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.

— W. J. Cameron

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.

— Albert Camus

Away with the cant of Measures, not men! -- the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.

— George Canning

Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.

— Joseph Cannon

Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

— Thomas Carlyle

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

— Thomas Carlyle

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul -- politics does the same thing for the body.

— Joyce Cary

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

— Henry Cate

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

— Michel De Certeau

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.

— John Jay Chapman

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.

— John Jay Chapman

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.

— John Jay Chapman

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

— John Jay Chapman

Half a truth is better than no politics.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.

— Madame Chiang Kai-Shek

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

— Winston Churchill

Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.

— Winston Churchill

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

— Winston Churchill

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

— Winston Churchill

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.

— Winston Churchill

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

— Alan Clark

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

— James Freeman Clarke

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.

— Bill Clinton

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.

— Bill Clinton

The highest political buzz word is not liberty, equality, fraternity or solidarity; it is service.

— Arthur Hugh Clough

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.

— Frank Moore Colby

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What we need in appointive positions are men of knowledge and experience with sufficient character to resist temptations.

— Calvin Coolidge

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

— James F. Cooper

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.

— Ralph J. Cudworth

The diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.

— Ely Culbertson

A politician is an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.

— E.E. (Edward. E.) Cummings

Rome had Senators too, and that is why it declined.

— Frank Dane

The news of any politician's death should be listed under Public Improvements.

— Frank Dane

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.

— Angela Y. Davis

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well.

— Len Deighton

The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, in England there shall be dear bread -- in Ireland, sword and brand; and poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand, so rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand, of the fine old English Tory days; hail to the coming time!

— Charles Dickens

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Finality is not the language of politics.

— Benjamin Disraeli

In politics, nothing is contemptible.

— Benjamin Disraeli

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

— Benjamin Disraeli

There is no gambling like politics. Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

— Benjamin Disraeli