quotations about politics
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
RICHARD ARMOUR
attributed, Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War
Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.
HENRI QUEUILLE
The Bureaucrat
Sometimes it appears that we're reaching a period when our senses and our minds will no longer respond to moderate stimulation. We seem to be approaching an Age of the Gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often discarded for disruptive demonstrations aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.
SPIRO AGNEW
speech in Houston, Texas, May 22, 1970
When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.
GARRISON KEILLOR
We Are Still Married
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
GEORGE ORWELL
Politics and the English Language
That politicians pure and simple are becoming less imbued with the literary spirit is, I think, certain, and it is to be regretted, because polite Politics are almost as much to be desired as polite Literature.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
When a man once gets a start holding office, it is nearly always necessary to finally choke him off.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
I never desire to know anything of the detail of political measures, lest even those which I think best should lose anything of their intrinsic value to me, by seeing what low, paltry, personal motives and base machinery and dirty hands have helped to bring them about.
FANNY KEMBLE
Further Records, February 14, 1874
Well, it's always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn't get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built. Politics isn't just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.
SARAH PALIN
speech, August 29, 2008
In Washington the hundreds of elected representatives get together in Congress to make decisions that impact all of us. There is no agreement when they walk into the session. There is only disagreement. Politics takes over. Coalitions are built. Everyone tries to get as much as possible, and most end with less than everything but something.
BILL GINDLESPERGER
"Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make", Public Opinion, May 6, 2016
Fear, Craft and Avarice
Cannot rear a State.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Politics
It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.
GERALD F. LIEBERMAN
attributed, Quotes about Politicians and Politics
In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and seeing it, to found one in himself. But whether it exists anywhere or ever exists is no matter; for this is the only commonwealth in whose politics he can ever take part.
PLATO
Republic
For too long we've been told about "us" and "them." Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that "they" are the problem, not "us." But there can be no "them" in America. There's only us.
BILL CLINTON
attributed, Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents: A Book of Quotations
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
And so it is in politics, dear brother,
Each for himself alone, there is no other.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power