quotations about politics
Politics is just show business for ugly people.
JAY LENO
attributed, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
In the founding era of our country, it was not organized religion but personal faith that brought focus and unified the early leadership--maybe an unspoken faith in God, and certain values that came with that faith. So in that sense, we cannot discount, in my judgment, religious faith in politics.
BILLY GRAHAM
Newsweek, August 14, 2006
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 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
They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
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
When you take a stand out of deep conviction, people know. They may not even agree, but they ask, "Do I want someone who is willing to take a hard stand and someone I can trust to do that when the chips are down?" They want that.
BARBARA BOXER
I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill -- it finds its way.
JONATHAN ALTER
book signing at Politics & Prose Bookstore, July 2, 2013
I do not believe that any work of art can help but be diminished by its adherence at any cost to a political program ... and not for any other reason than that there is no political program -- any more than there is a theory of tragedy -- which can encompass the complexities of real life.
ARTHUR MILLER
introduction, Collected Plays
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
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
In 2018, the White House is occupied by a man with no evident principles beyond promoting his own brand and chalking up "wins," however he might define them. He's so uninterested in the particulars of governing that he recently told lawmakers that he would sign whatever immigration bill they sent him. How do you negotiate with a chief executive who doesn't know what a good deal is?
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
"The Jell-O President and the Shutdown", New York Times, January 22, 2018
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
Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul.
MAO ZEDONG
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
Madame Politics is like Venus: they whom she decoys into her castle perish.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Story of My Life
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
A politician don't steal elections, he pays for 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
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
Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish
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