Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

politics

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.

Finality is not the language of politics.

From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

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

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

It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

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

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

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable for in politics there is no honour.

There is no gambling like politics.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is.

I have no consistency, except in politics and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether.

I'm not involved in the politics of religion, but I love what the message is.

If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.

In argument, truth always prevails finally in politics, falsehood always.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Justice, sir, is the great interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.

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

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt.

The secret of getting things done is to act!

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

I have always said I will be in politics to serve as best as I can and it will take me wherever it will take me.

I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

If nominated, I will not run if elected, I will not serve.

In ancient Greece, politics and the market were not decoupled.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

Politics are a very unsatisfactory game.

Politics are not the task of a Christian.

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.

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

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

Politics... have always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

A week is a long time in politics.

In politics women type the letters, lick the stamps, distribute the pamphlets and get out the vote. Men get elected.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.

I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.

Politics is not an exact science.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Politics is the art of the next best.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Politics ruins the character.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

The world is governed by opinion.

There are no morals in politics there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities that is not to be taken seriously in politics.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President I'm beginning to believe it.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

My brother Bob doesn't want to be in government - he promised Dad he'd go straight.

Politics have no relation to morals.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

I learnt more about politics during one South Dakota dust storm than in seven years at the university.

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

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

Politics is like football if you see daylight, go through the hole.

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics.

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics.

We would not have our politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of other lands.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.

Because politics rests on an irreducible measure of coercion, it can never become a perfect realm of perfect love and justice.

Everything is politics.

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

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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

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

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

Economics, politics, and personalities are often inseparable.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education all politics can do is keep us out of war.

I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

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

One lesson you better learn if you want to be in politics is that you never go out on a golf course and beat the President.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Vote for the man who promises least he'll be the least disappointing.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

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

Liberalism is Rationalism in politics.

Politics makes me sick.

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

In politics the middle way is none at all.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

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

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

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

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

It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear...'

Oh, that lovely title, ex-president.

Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows - marriage does.

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

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

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

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

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

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

A fool and his money are soon elected.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

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

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress but I repeat myself.

America's present need is not heroics but healing not nostrums but normalcy not revolution but restoration.

Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

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

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.

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

It is easier for women to succeed in business, the arts, and politics in America than in Europe.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

Politics is a blood sport.

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

Politics is applesauce.

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

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

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