Quotes About Politics - Some Cynical, Some Hopeful, All On Point

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

Political correctness is tyranny with manners.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

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

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Crime does not pay as well as politics.

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

Politics calls for robust debate and criticism, but this should never descend to personal and demeaning slurs.

The best politics is no politics.

In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes.

Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.

Politics is the science of who gets what, when, and why.

To let politics become a cesspool, and then avoid it because it is a cesspool, is a double crime.

Politics, in a sense, has always been a con game.

In politics, you must let the other person have your way.

The politician is a biped; but he is probably an aberrant form of hyena.

The only way to reform a politician is to hang him.

I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you.

There can be no wise politics without thought beforehand.

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

Frankly, if you do politics, you should not be thinking about your dignity.

A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.

Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

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

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

Never underestimate the ego of a politician.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.

You have to believe that it's through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.

You are who you are, and in politics, if you stay who you are, you do better.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don't really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.

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.

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

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

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

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

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

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

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

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

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

Politics is the only field in which the more experience you have, the worse you get.

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

Enter politics, and you enter the glass house; there are no secrets and no places to hide.

The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable -- the art of the next best.

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

Politics is the art of the next best.

Politics is -- once in a while -- a forum for serious debate about political philosophy.

Politics is the one field you don't age out of.

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

Politics won't allow for the truth.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

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

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

The difference between a rebel and a patriot depends upon who is in power at the moment.

That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep.

Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.

You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Politics is about the participation and engagement of the wider citizenry -- to miss that point would doom us to irrelevance.

Politics is only worthwhile if you are doing what you believe, regardless of the slings and arrows.

You don't go into politics unless you want to win.

Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics.

Politics is a blood sport.

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

Politics is the art of realizing what there is to realize.

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

Politics is a lot tougher than physics.

Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

Politics doesn't matter, policy does.

Is there decency left in American politics?

There's very little reason in politics these days.

Politics means facing up to hard choices and facing down prejudice, short-termism, the easy, tempting court of knee-jerk public reaction.

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.

Politics is the most corrupt profession on Earth, no matter where you are.

Economics, politics, and personalities are often inseparable.

When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

In politics you learn to always smile.

Sometimes in politics, you think you've seen it all. Turns out I was wrong.

The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.

The thing about politics is to plan 10 years ahead, and assume every year is your last.

Religion and politics are supposed to be separate.

People want change but not too much change. Finding that balance is tricky for every politician.

When something really comes from the soul, I think it has a truth that you cannot find in politics.

Politics and power is a realm of relative influence.

The way politics divides the world is into friend and enemy.

Politics is activity in relation to power.

What matters most in politics is personality. It's not issues; it's not image. It's who you are and what you represent.

Hope springs eternal, even in politics.

Politics makes estranged bedfellows.

Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one.

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.

Radical politics tend to be simple minded.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

In politics, sometimes the best measure of success is the reaction of your enemies.

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

More things in politics happen by accident or exhaustion than happen by conspiracy.

Politics has high and low moments. Sometimes it brings out the better angels of our nature; sometimes baser instincts.

Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.

Politics follows the lines of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

The art of politics is knowing what to do next.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

If you lose, you can't lead. If you don't lead, you're irrelevant. Winning is what it's all about in politics.

In politics, as in poetry, it is sometimes true that it is darkest before dawn.

Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly?

I loathe and detest all this trivialisation of politics.

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

What goes for sex goes double for politics.

In politics, not all lies are all lies. And not all truths are complete.

Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics.

In life and in politics, it's helpful to try to perceive the other person through the most generous lens.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

Politics are well past logic. It's entertainment.

Politics abhors a vacuum.

Everything in politics is politically motivated, didn't you know?

They politics like ours profess, the greater prey upon the less.

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.

A life in politics is for people who know themselves and know where their own line is between loyalty and honesty.

Each generation is responsible to make the future of the next.

Politics is a highly tribal business.

We need leadership. We don't need a doubling down on the failed politics of the past.

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

Politics is show business for ugly people.

Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.

A dose of humility goes a long way in life and in politics.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.

Good government is good politics.

If we give up on politics, we're done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

When it comes to politics, there's never a certain yes or no to any situation.

Does politics have to be injected into everything?

You help me, I'll help you. That's politics.

A second opinion never hurts, not only in medicine, but also in politics.

In politics one should not expect big jumps. Everything takes time.

Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.

Politics is a lot like acting. You have to be on all the time.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

Politics is a contact sport.

I hate politics. What they say and what they do is completely different.

In politics, the reaction to a controversy is very often more enlightening and important than the details of the allegations themselves.

People are getting too far away from the real-world. Politics is just ridiculous, it's totally dysfunctional.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.

Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.

In politics, there is only one crime that is unforgivable -- showing weakness.

In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.

In politics, victory is never total.

Money is at the root of most that is wrong in American politics.

Real politics starts with common people.

A nation that hates politics will not long survive as a democracy.

We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.

No one you'd really like to see in public office has the bad taste to run.

Politics is applesauce.

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

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

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

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.

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

Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.

A drop of ink may make a million think.

Every election is determined by the people who show up.

My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.

This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.

A political convention is just not a place where you come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

Since the majority is always wrong, might we try one election day where all the losers take office?

Politics, noun. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.

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

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

Vote early and vote often.

Politics isn't only about government. Politics is about the people.

It is a fine game to play -- the game of politics -- and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

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

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

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