Quotes about politics

It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

— W. Somerset Maugham

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.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts.

— Eugene J. Mccarthy

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.

— Eugene J. Mccarthy

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

— Eugene J. Mccarthy

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

— Ian Mcewan

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

— Marshall Mcluhan

Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse.

— H. L. Mencken

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.

— H. L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

— H. L. Mencken

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

— John Stuart Mill

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.

— Henry Miller

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

— George J. Mitchell

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.

— Walter F. Mondale

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.

— Benjamin J. Montalbano

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

— John Morley

We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart.

— Hector Hugh Munro

When you've got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.

— Fern Naito

The Empress is legitimate, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.

— Napoleon III

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

— George Jean Nathan

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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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

— Richard M. Nixon

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

— Richard M. Nixon

I am not a crook.

— Richard M. Nixon

The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.

— Richard M. Nixon

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.

— Kwame Nkrumah

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

— Peggy Noonan

Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.

— Peggy Noonan

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

— Peggy Noonan

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, can steal millions.

— Gregory Nunn

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

— Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

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.

— P. J. O'Rourke

Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

— George Orwell

Politics is the science of urgencies.

— Theodore Parker

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

— Cecil Parkinson

People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

— Claiborne Pell

The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they've been appointed and thinking they've been anointed.

— Claude D. Pepper

If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

— H. Ross Perot

Political success is the ability, when the inevitable occurs, to get credit for it.

— Laurence J. Peter

Politician: From the Greek poly (many) and the French t?te (head or face, as in t?te-?-t?te: head to head or face to face). Hence

— Martin Pitt

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

— Platen

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

— Plato

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

I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

— Alexander Pope

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.

— L. R. Powell

People that are really weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

— Dan Quayle

Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the back!

— Dan Quayle

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.

— Dan Quayle

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

— John Quinton

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

— Ronald Reagan

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

— Ronald Reagan

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

— Ronald Reagan

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

— Ronald Reagan

We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.

— Adrienne Rich

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.

— Elliot Richardson

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

— Dana Gillman Rinehart

What in fact takes place in an election is that two hand picked candidates are propped up before the citizenry, each candidate having been selected by a very small group of politically active people. A minority of the people... then elects one of these hand picked people to rule itself and the majority.

— Robert J. Ringer

In politics a straight line is the shortest distance to disaster.

— John P. Roche

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

— Will Rogers

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

— Will Rogers

I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.

— Will Rogers

No party is as bad as its leaders.

— Will Rogers

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

— Will Rogers

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

— Will Rogers

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.

— Will Rogers

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.

— Will Rogers

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.

— Will Rogers

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

— Will Rogers

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

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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).

— Harold Rosenberg

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

— Jean Rostand

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

— Jean Rostand

We have never yet had a labor Government that knew what taking power really means; they always act like second-class citizens.

— Dora Russell

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.

— William Safire

The lounge of the main hotel is full of jollity, with large comfortable men sitting in braces; the bar is packed with talkative intellectuals, full of witty disloyalties. The next week the main hotel is suddenly full of dinner-jackets and large hats. The girls are dressed as if for a weekend in the country. When one of the great men of the party comes through, the crowd edges respectfully away, murmuring loyal noises.

— Anthony Sampson

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

— Seneca

Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.

— William Shakespeare

A politician is one that would circumvent God.

— William Shakespeare

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

— William Shakespeare

We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

— George Bernard Shaw

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

— George Bernard Shaw

If I was forced to choose between the penitentiary and White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

— William T. Sherman

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

— Socrates

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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.

— Jonathan Swift

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.

— Jonathan Swift

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

— William Howard Taft

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Alexis De Tocqueville

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.

— Lily Tomlin

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!

— Leon Trotsky

The essential ingredient in politics is timing.

— Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Within the first few months I discovered that being president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

— Harry S Truman

When a leader is in the Democratic Party he is a boss, and when he is in the Republican Party he is a leader.

— Harry S Truman