quotations about politics
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
New Hopes for a Changing World
Some folks do not understand that the root of politics is compromise and that happens best in an atmosphere of mutual respect. They believe politics is a dirty business. They throw mud, do not act ethically, out and out lie, bully and threaten others with whom they do not agree. I would argue that this is not politics but ignorance.
BILL GINDLESPERGER
"Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make", Public Opinion, May 6, 2016
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
THOMAS HUXLEY
"Universities, Actual & Ideal"
I say that politics is the most important of the civil activities and has its own field of action, which is not that of religion. Political institutions are secular by definition and operate in independent spheres. All my predecessors have said the same thing, for many years at least, albeit with different accents. I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I'm here.
POPE FRANCIS
"How the Church will change", La Repubblica, October 1, 2013
There was an apathy beneath the empty passion-play of politics. The center had frayed like a rag rug that had been washed and walked on and shaken and hung and dried.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.
BARACK OBAMA
The New Yorker, May 31, 2004
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
letter to Leonard V. Finder, January 22, 1948
Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
There's just one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in Opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Maid in Waiting
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
All political movements are like this -- we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.
DORIS LESSING
"A Notorious Life", Salon, November 11, 1997
Politics is a far more intellectual business than is often realized. You may think: Well, if it's simplicity that's required, you don't need a whole lot of detail. Wrong. The simplicity is not born of superficial analysis. It is simple precisely because it is the product of being worked through.
TONY BLAIR
A Journey: My Political Life
Politics: a Trojan horse race.
STANISLAW JERZY LEC
Unkempt Thoughts
Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul.
MAO ZEDONG
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
HELEN DENDY BOSANQUET
The Family
All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech to Scottish Conservative Party Conference, May 12, 1979
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.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Illustrated London News, April 6, 1918
A politician don't steal elections, he pays for 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's