Politics Quotes

Politics has less to do with where you live than where your heart is.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart, and if you enter the arena , you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, Democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history. The great debates of the past, all stirred great passions. They all made somebody angry, and at least once led to a terrible war. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

There is hardly a political question in the United States which doesn't sooner or later turn into a judicial one.

The United States Congress, like a lot of rich people, lives in two houses.

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

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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

Politics is applesauce.

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.

When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.

In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

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

I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal. Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Capital punishment turns the state into a murderer, but imprisonment turns the state into a gay dungeon-master.

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the Presidency.

Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.

The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'

Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

Suffrage is the pivotal right.

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is--the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.

A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

It's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.

Diplomacy...the art of restraining power.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

No foreign policy - no matter how ingenious - has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority,
let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

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.

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thus far, the reputed idiot Bush has graduated from Yale and Harvard, made a stack of cash in the oil industry, become the first consecutive-term governor of Texas, defeated a dual-term VP for the presidency, and led his party to [November 5th's] extraordinary triumphs. Let his opponents keep calling him stupid; if they do, within five years Bush will be King of England, the Pope, and world Formula One motor racing champion.

In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.

My political ambitions have nothing to do with vanity or the desire for power. I want to help people. I owe them something after all they've done for me.

I would rather be governor of California than own Austria.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.

The leader of genius must have the ability to make different
opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.

If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.

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

It is our true policy to steer clear of any permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellow men.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheeses?

If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

The more you read about politics, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.

The thing we all have to understand to put these last two years in focus, is that liberals in this country care more about whether European leaders like us than they do about whether terrorists are killing us.

A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

We'll never know where John Kerry stands on an issue because he�ll take both sides � all three sides, four sides, however many sides there are � of an issue.

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.

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

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

It is the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

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

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

One thing I have learned about the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them -- and whatever strengths you have, you're going to need them.

It takes a long time to turn a big country around.

The White House: I don't know whether it's the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the prison system.

There is -- in world affairs -- a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.

The Vice Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does.

If you look back on the '60s and think there was more good than harm, you're probably a Democrat. If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican.

Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.

The more you read and observe about this Politics thing you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Western hatred are over.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer.

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

The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.