American Political Quotes

#1. Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.

Noam Chomsky

#2. The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.

Herbert Croly

#3. The American political experience can therefore be viewed as optimism in the collective.

Michael J. Fox

#4. The reduction of political discourse to sound bites is one of the worst things that's happened in American political life.

John Silber

#5. Ex-Im is the lowest of low-hanging fruit in the sprawling tree of American political corruption. And yet House Republicans cannot seem to pluck it.

Anonymous

#6. If sexual intercourse, as the poets tell us, began in 1963, it was another decade and a half before the American political system began to take notice.

Michael Kinsley

#7. Few dramas in American political history remain more riveting than that of Nixon's exit and Mr. Ford's reaction, at first halting and then decisive, to the looming possibility of a former president on criminal trial for months on end.

Scott Shane

#8. People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about.

Thomas Frank

#9. Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the
American political elite from the beginning.

Gore Vidal

#10. The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.

Ezra Klein

#11. We have now an American political party and a European one. Not all Americans who vote for the European party want to become Europeans. But it doesn't matter because that's what they're voting for. They're voting for dependency, for lack of ambition, and for insolvency.

Harvey Mansfield

#12. The American political system is so porous, it's so open, it's so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy.

Michael Mandelbaum

#13. Unquestionably, American political rhetoric can be repugnant, and the Right can certainly be as guilty as the Left.

John Podhoretz

#14. Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.

Matthew Yglesias

#15. Those who take the extreme positions in American political and economic life are always wrong.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#16. When you don't have accountability, there's no limit to the things that people will say. One of the restraints on the vitriol and the filth that so often is part of the American political debate is that candidates have to stand by their ads.

Sheldon Whitehouse

#17. Well, it's possible that the new infusion of ad money against Donald Trump kept his margins in Kentucky and Louisiana down a bit. But we're also seeing something that we've never seen in 100 years, which is we are seeing the crackup of a major American political party.

Mara Liasson

#18. And the American political spectrum is constrained by the expediencies of a two-party system that suppresses the potential emergence of breakaway movements responding to fleeting senses of urgency or perceived rigidity in the mainstream parties.

Justin Gest

#19. The American political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some.

P. J. O'Rourke

#20. The American mass media have achieved what American political might could not: World domination.

Akbar S. Ahmed

#21. It is such a disappointment in American political reaction and actions. When some of our politicians are flying around the country in private airplanes all the time, using public services as their mode of private transportation, and then criticizing us who are in business.

Arnold Palmer

#22. In the American political lexicon, 'change' always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.

Ron Paul

#23. A lot of America's success is because we're an open society and haven't brought dogma or religious influence into the American political process.

Jeff Hawkins

#24. With our gift for language and willingness to stand up and be counted, as well as heaps of charm and charisma, we Irish have long been an integral part of American political life.

Rashers Tierney

#25. The plain truth is that labor is the chief representative force that keeps the real special interests from dominating American political life.

Lane Kirkland

#26. In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

P. J. O'Rourke

#27. Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

Alex Pareene

#28. In 1987, the United States celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the constitutional convention that provided the basic rules for the American political order. This convention was one of the very few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen.

James M. Buchanan

#29. I think the tragedy of Barack Obama's presidency is that although a lot of people around the world really admire Barack Obama a lot, they don't admire the American political and economic model as much as they used to.

Peter Beinart

#30. Every time Bush talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system.

William J. Clinton

#31. We go off the meds and elect Richard Nixon, the Nurse Ratched of the American political psych ward.

Don Winslow

#32. Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.

Jonah Goldberg

#33. The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

S.I. Hayakawa

#34. The word that identified what we did not possess was "money," . . . The other word was "votes," so that together "money votes" was "open sesame" to the deep caverns of the American political system.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

#35. The Cold War was really the great struggle of the 20th Century and it shaped American political life from top to bottom.

Jeff Sharlet

#36. American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

Glenn Greenwald

#37. I just didn't understand the American political system, and I felt really stupid about that.

Drew Barrymore

#38. Media scrutiny is a great trademark of the American political arena.

Duncan Hunter

#39. The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda

Joe Bageant

#40. We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.

Jimmy Carter

#41. There are reports that leaders from ISIS and al-Qaida met at a farm house in Syria last week, and agreed to work together against their common enemies. That story again: Two radical terrorist groups managed to do what two American political parties cannot.

Jimmy Fallon

#42. Donald Trump is not a Republican. Donald Trump is not a conservative. Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history, basically a con job, where he's trying to take over the Republican Party by telling people he's someone who he is not.

Marco Rubio

#43. Every single administration in American political history has put cronies and pals and donors into political positions. But normally those people become the ambassador to Liechtenstein or the deputy undersecretary of commerce.

Irwin Redlener

#44. Each side, hypocritical enough to pretend that it lives up to its own hype, is equally insistent that the other side's worst is truly all that it is. American political advertising is sinking slowly toward a level worthy of Soviet propaganda.

Os Guinness

#45. I've been really at the highest levels of American political life.

Hillary Clinton

#46. The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.

Larry Laudan

#47. It isn't the American white man who is a racist, but it's the American political, economic and social atmosphere that automatically nourishes a racist psychology in the white man.

Malcolm X

#48. The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#49. What is the pope doing inserting himself - he's the Vicar of Christ. He is the worldwide leader of the Catholic faith. What is he doing inserting himself into the American political system this way? That to me is the larger question.

Rush Limbaugh

#50. And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most important moments in modern American political life.

Judy Woodruff

#51. American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

Richard Dawkins

#52. It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system.

Bob Woodward

#53. It seems foolhardy to assume that the armed state will necessarily be benevolent. The American political tradition is, for good or ill, based in large measure on a healthy mistrust of the state.

Sanford Levinson

#54. Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

Thomas Frank

#55. I have spent time discussing the American political system and current events in Taiwan with the junior diplomats, and they have repeatedly expressed their country's desire to avoid confrontation with China.

Michael K. Simpson

#56. One of the reasons people feel so alienated from the American political process is in the fights we get in here in Washington, no one's ever talking about them and the challenges they're going through.

Marco Rubio

#57. With all its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world.

Eldridge Cleaver

#58. It is a central characteristic of the American political system that a wheelbarrow fetishist could be mayor of Omaha.

Charles L. Mee Jr.

#59. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#60. The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

Carl Bernstein

#61. I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for, because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life.

Peter Singer

#62. American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression.

Erik Larson

#63. I think we have to ask this administration, and the President specifically, about using their political capital now to stand up for the American consumer who is getting clobbered by these gasoline and oil prices.

Ron Wyden

#64. No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass.

John Marshall

#65. It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.

Chris Matthews

#66. Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder.

Hank Johnson

#67. Let's face it: The Jewish community is the most active political community in American society.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#68. Regardless of your political affiliation, most people agree that Ronald Reagan was an American icon. He was a president of national significance and for that reason he deserves an honor in the nation's capital.

Henry Bonilla

#69. I still have a great deal of faith in our political system and a great deal of faith in the American people and voter.

Sharron Angle

#70. Followers of another political party tell us that we will strengthen ourselves by ignoring our history, our traditions, our mythologies, our culture and vision, and by following the American way.

B.W. Powe

#71. From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

Narendra Modi

#72. The notion of a defense that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic, as it were, in the president's vision.

James R. Schlesinger

#73. We are going to have the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in the American history, in Barack Obama, and we are going to have a candidate of paychecks.

Newt Gingrich

#74. We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules.

Barack Obama

#75. It's no surprise that at the same time that American universities have engaged in a serious commitment to diversity, they have been thought-prisons. We are not talking about diversity in any real way. We are talking about brown, black, white versions of the same political ideology.

Richard Rodriguez

#76. How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

Molly Ivins

#77. Why would I be willing to challenge my Republican leadership? Because my allegiance will always be to the Constitution and the American people first and foremost, not to my political party.

Matt Salmon

#78. I think if more members of Congress would talk about what they see and what they want to do and what they want to accomplish, rather than talking about their opponent, we would begin to shape and reshape American public opinion on what the political world looks like.

Reid Ribble

#79. It is the members of this business elite ... that pose the greatest danger to our American way of life. They are the ones who've bought and paid for members of both political parties ...

Lou Dobbs

#80. The Archivist of the United States essentially works for the American people across partisan lines and not, regardless of which Administration nominates the person, for a particular President or political party.

Allen Weinstein

#81. Political vitriol is a familiar enough characteristic of American history.

Robert Dallek

#82. It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

Vladimir Putin

#83. If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

H.L. Mencken

#84. The polarization of Congress; the decline of civility; and the rise of attack politics in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the early years of the new century are a blot on our political system and a disservice to the American people.

Edward Brooke

#85. What upon Earth is the matter with the American people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin?

Frederick Douglass

#86. I've always found that avoiding insanity is useful in life - which in American politics sometimes puts one in the minority.

Tony Blankley

#87. Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

Barbara Jordan

#88. Either we start cutting the government and shrinking the size of government, or else we're going to face the political wrath of the American people.

Marlin Stutzman

#89. From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history.

Marco Rubio

#90. There is no man who is enterprising and keeps well up with the times but confesses that the women of to-day are in every respect, except political liberty, equal to the men.

S. Alice Callahan

#91. Nations need to constantly reaffirm their historical roots to maintain their political ideals. Motion pictures were one of the media used by nations to accommplish this task. The question one must ask is: Did the colonial films made faithfully represent the period in our nation's history?

John P. Harty Jr.

#92. It [concentration of wealth and power] has been a menace to ... American democracy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#93. Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

James McGreevey

#94. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#95. In many Latin American countries, the historic ties of Catholic bishops with the political elite rendered them less sensitive to the conditions of the poor and especially of indigenous people.

Moises Naim

#96. Patriotism is not 'my country right or wrong'; patriotism means loving the ideals for which America stands and having the courage to speak up when these ideals are distorted for personal or political gain. The American government was instituted to be the servant of the people, not our master.

Robert A. Heinlein

#97. The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

Jon Meacham

#98. I came into American politics and into this political system proud of politics and the way we make decisions.

Byron Dorgan

#99. To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

Michael Mandelbaum

#100. American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization - the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.

Llewellyn Rockwell