Politics

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. ~~ Arthur C. Clarke

Politics should 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. ~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil. ~~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Get thee glass eyes;
And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not. ~~ William Shakespeare

It is probably safe to say that over a long period of time, political morality has been as high as business morality. ~~ Henry Steele Commager

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

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

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. ~~ Henry Brooks Adams

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity. ~~ Vera Brittain

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

A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service. ~~ Georges Pompidou

There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. ~~ Sir Karl Popper

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

He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself. ~~ Herbert Hoover

The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. ~~ Adlai E. Stevenson

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman, of the next generation. ~~ James Freeman Clarke

A politician is like quicksilver; if you try to put your finger on him, you will find nothing under it. ~~ Austin O'Malley

I am not a politician, and my other habits are good. ~~ Artemus Ward [pen name of Charles Farrar Browne]

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. ~~ Henry Kissinger

The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces. ~~ Maureen Murphy

How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician. ~~ Henry Miller

A politician is a person who thinks twice before he says nothing. ~~ Joe Moore

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

In politics I am growing indifferent -- I would like it, if I could now return to my planting and books at home. ~~ Ulysses Simpson Grant

I wish that all Americans would realize that American politics is world politics. ~~ Theodore Roosevelt

Politics when I am in it, makes me sick. ~~ William Howard Taft

My father said, Politics asks the question: Is it expedient? Vanity asks: Is it popular? But conscience asks: Is it right? ~~ Dexter Scott King

Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, Trust me, they're actually being very un-American. ~~ David Duchovny

I don't think it does any harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals. ~~ Charles Kuralt

It seems very unfortunate that in order to secure political preference, people are made Vice President who are never intended, neither by party nor by the Lord, to be Presidents. ~~ Omar Bradley

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do. ~~ Richard Milhous Nixon

The notion of political correctness declares certain topics certain expressions even certain gestures off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship. ~~ George Herbert Walker Bush

Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy. ~~ Michael Kinsley

The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship. ~~ Kirkpatrick Sale

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. ~~ Robert Louis Stevenson

The truly skillful politician is one who, when he comes to a fork in the road, goes both ways. ~~ Marco A. Almazan

What's real in politics is what the voters decide is real. ~~ Ben J. Wattenberg

A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he's the only one who can save the ship. ~~ Ivern Ball

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. ~~ Doug Larson

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. ~~ Chester Bowles

It is a curious fact that when we get sick we want an uncommon doctor... When we get into a war, we dreadfully want an uncommon admiral and an uncommon general. Only when we get into politics are we content with the common man. ~~ Herbert Hoover

From 40 to 60 percent of the presidential office is not in administration but in morals, politics, and spiritual leadership. He has to guide a people in the greatest adventure ever undertaken on the planet. ~~ William Allen White

A politician is a man who shakes your hand before election and your confidence afterward. ~~ Unattributed

The hardest job for a politician today is to have the courage to be a moderate. It's easy to take an extreme position. ~~ Hubert Humphrey

Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs. ~~ P. J. O'Rourke

Differences in political opinion are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary. ~~ George Washington

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday. ~~ Russell Baker

Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never. ~~ Alphonse de Lamartine

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power. ~~ Aldous Huxley

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. ~~ Margaret Thatcher

Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice. ~~ Richard Harris

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society. ~~ Peter Kropotkin

[About the rhinoceros:] Here is an animal with a hide two feet think and no apparent interest in politics. What a waste. ~~ James C. Wright, Jr.

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

In politics stupidity is not a handicap. ~~ Napolean Bonaparte

Saying we should keep the two-party [political] 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

It's important for people not to hold a high opinion of politicians, and one of the strengths of the British is that they don't on the whole... The danger begins when people start admiring politicians. ~~ Richard Ingrams

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements of their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people. ~~ Walter Lippman

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 Mondale

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

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

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

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme. ~~ Roy Hattersley

Most of us are conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint -- Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate. The fact of the matter is that most of the problems ... that we now face are technical problems, are administrative problems. They are very sophisticated judgments, which do not lead themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past. [They] deal with questions which are now beyond the comprehension of most men. ~~ John F. Kennedy

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

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

Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them, and not just say, "Oh, they're all the same." They are all the same in certain ways, alas -- a political animal is such an animal. But lurking somewhere behind their rhetoric and their spittle are important choices that we should make. ~~ Dennis Potter

To bemoan the messiness of politics is not just a folly; it betrays a dangerous impatience with basic realities. It is like becoming disturbed that people do not fall in love sensibly -- and so deciding to computerize the problem. ~~ Theodore Roszak

You do the policy, I'll do the politics. ~~ Dan Quayle