Quotes about politics

A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

— Harry S Truman

It takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.

— Harry S Truman

I always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.

— Harry S Truman

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

— Mark Twain

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

— Mark Twain

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.

— Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

— Mark Twain

I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.

— Boss Tweed

A recent survey was said to prove that the people we Americans most admire are our politicians and doctors. I don't believe it. They are simply the people we are most afraid of. And with the most reason.

— Source Unknown

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.

— Source Unknown

Nothing can be said about our politics that has not already been said about hemorrhoids.

— Source Unknown

Politicians should never put themselves first: governments should put people first and all of us should put our country first.

— Source Unknown

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

— Source Unknown

The most difficult choice a politician must ever make is whether to be a hypocrite or a liar.

— Source Unknown

Until you've been in politics you've never really been alive; it's rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But, it's the only sport for grown-ups all other games are for kids.

— Source Unknown

He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.

— Queen Victoria

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.

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.

— Michio Watanabe

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

— Auberon Waugh

Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say In spite of all! has the calling for politics.

— Max Weber

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

— Max Weber

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

— Orson Welles

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

— Elwyn Brooks White

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

— Oscar Wilde

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

— Oscar Wilde

He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.

— Oscar Wilde

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

— George F. Will

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

— George F. Will

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

— George F. Will

This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

— Harold Wilson

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

— Mao Zedong

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

— Gerhard Kocher

Instead of starry-eyed worship of grand illusions, the mature citizen admires and idealizes proven values. He reveres, among other things, certain time-honored virtues and the people who practice them, especially the personal ideals of honesty, integrity, self-reliance, courage, persistence and dependability; the political ideals of individual liberty, the rights of property and contract, and the rule of law; and the ethical ideals of mutuality, decency and charity, among others.

— Lyle H. Jr. Rossiter

The problem is not Republican principles. The problem is unprincipled Republicans.

— Alfonzo Rachel

The only consistency I see within most politicians is, 'the saying of one thing and doing of another'.

— A. Brandon Trean

Politics: The exploitation of peoples trust.

— A. Brandon Trean

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

— Margaret Thatcher

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

— Ronald Reagan

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.

— Ogden Nash

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Henry Brooks Adams

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

— Henry Brooks Adams

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

— Mary Mccarthy

If you're in 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.

— Lyndon B. Johnson