It Politics Quotes

#1. I will never give up politics. I've tried to give it up three times, but I never made it. Politics mobilizes me. I won't last long if I give it up.

Mikhail Gorbachev

#2. When we win on an issue we call it leadership. When we lose, we call it politics. Practicing politics simply means increasing your options for effective results.

John Eldred

#3. We exchanged wry military grins that told each other how much we hated those fly-blown pieces of shit who tied the hands of decent men and called it politics.

Hugh Laurie

#4. The reason I wrote political satire was because I thought it - politics - was important ... that public policy was important. Then I transitioned into books, then into radio.

Al Franken

#5. I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'

David Byrne

#6. I think everything has some politics to it. It's just whether or not it admits to it. Politics is weird. I don't even know what that means any more.

John Cusack

#7. Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

Roland Joffe

#8. Politics, poverty, riches, etc - these are but backdrops for the grand cinema, the opera: the glory of your life. Sure, change the backdrops, make them better, but it is this inside-ness that matters most. Nothing else, at the last breath, matters, but your very own poetry. The glory of living.

Alex Ebert

#9. In elections in Iceland, I have always been an abstainer. It seems like politics is such a small bundle of self-important people, who don't have much to do with things I'm interested in.

Bjork

#10. Politics is theater. It doesn't matter if you win. You make a statement. You say, I'm here, pay attention to me

Harvey Milk

#11. The Good Friday Agreement was an incredible breakthrough. But it's my view that the Hillsborough Agreement could see politics in the north come of age, and see us all move forwards on the basis of equality and partnership.

Martin McGuinness

#12. When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called rent-a-spine

Margaret Thatcher

#13. Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.

Robert Harris

#14. The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.

Molly Ivins

#15. If a person, in a position of authority, wants someone to believe a lie, usually all they have to do is tell it to them. If they want someone to believe a ridiculous lie, all they have to do is tell it to them enough.

Derek R. Audette

#16. The duty of the people is to tend to their own affairs.
The duty of government is to help them do it.
This is the pasta of politics.
The inspired leader, the true prince, no matter how great, can only be sauce upon the pasta.
Bombolini

Robert Crichton

#17. When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

Herbert Hoover

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

Frank Rich

#19. Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.

Virginia Woolf

#20. If you're a social democrat, then you think it's cool to pay taxes. For me, tax is the finest expression for what politics really is.

Mona Sahlin

#21. And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there.

Robert Scheer

#22. Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself.

Kevin Rudd

#23. Until you realize how easily it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else's game.

Evita Ochel

#24. L.A. is such a real, active place. My mother was very into the core of the city. She worked in politics, and you have to know your territory. It's an active matrix; we're all parts of it, but people don't often stop to wonder what's going on.

Janet Fitch

#25. A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

Aristotle.

#26. It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people and their emotions closer to my readers, not explain Turkish politics.

Orhan Pamuk

#27. The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior of Afghanistan.

H.L. Mencken

#28. When it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water's edge.

Hillary Clinton

#29. It is obvious to you that the struggle will be an unequal one, but I shall make it - I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me.

Emmeline Pankhurst

#30. If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

Mark Twain

#31. Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.

Trevanian

#32. Politics does not concern itself who should rule us. It is about what kind of rule people should have.

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

#33. A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.

Noah Webster

#34. It's tempting to think of US politics as sport or entertainment until you realize these clowns are actually making important policy decisions.

Michael Sadoff

#35. More riveting to me in the end than the politics of Berlin was the vast social experiment its division had become... it was possible to have freedom and plenty in the West and craft an empty life; it was possible to "have nothing" in the East and create a life of intimacy and dignity and beauty.

Krista Tippett

#36. In his twilight years Hmaing became a supporter of leftist politics while remaining a devout Buddhist. It is open to question how much he actually absorbed of the Marxist socialist ideologies embraced by many of his young disciples. Khitsan

Suu Kyi, Aung San

#37. There is a place in America for diversity of views and opinions. I may cook my gumbo differently from you, but that does not make mine better. I may just use different ingredients. Politics has gotten so spicy, and we need to cool it down some. We may find that your recipe for gumbo is just as good.

Donna Brazile

#38. Marijuana is a very dangerous drug. Some people smoke it just once and go directly into politics.

Barry Crimmins

#39. In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.

Thomas Sowell

#40. We must restore faith in politics. Reform of the House of Lords is only one part of the answer, but it is a vital one.

Charles Kennedy

#41. Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry.

Alexander McCall Smith

#42. If it's cynical, risky politics that brings a lighted match and a can of gas near the Democratic coalition, it should be named as such, and its consequences understood, and it should become part of the complex calculus we're all building to help us understand these campaigns.

Ezra Klein

#43. Freedom, democracy, and socialism can only ever exist together; it is impossible to have any one without the other two.

Michel Templet

#44. Writers only think they are interested in politics, they are not really, it gives them a chance to talk and writers like to talk but really no real writer is really interested in politics.

Gertrude Stein

#45. They took your commandments off the schoolhouse walls, they say it's a crime to pray.

Randy Travis

#46. It must be remembered that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed as epic tales and not as historical texts. To use Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for 11th-century Scottish politics would rather miss the point of the play, and the same is true of the Homeric epics.

Nic Fields

#47. Politics as a parent is fairly demanding; if your parent is in politics, it's fairly demanding, so I make no excuses about taking two weeks off.

George Osborne

#48. Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people's stuff.

George Carlin

#49. Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden.

Allen Lacy

#50. I don't really think it's appropriate for me to be picking and choosing in the primaries. It's pretty dumb politics for a Republican to choose between Republicans in a contested primary because obviously you're going to be offending some people.

John Cornyn

#51. Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about," said the voice of Maurice. "They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.

Terry Pratchett

#52. Politics is noble; it is one of the highest forms of charity, as Paul VI used to say. We sully it when we mix it with business. The relationship between the Church and political power can also be corrupted if common good is not the only converging point.

Pope Francis

#53. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.

Christopher Hitchens

#54. I'm Iranian and no matter what I do, I'm dealing with politics because especially my music, that it's a music that talks about peace, love, unity.

Hafez Nazeri

#55. Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small?

Langston Hughes

#56. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we

Thomas Paine

#57. I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, when it comes to journalism.

Aaron Sorkin

#58. If you want to be President, decide it at the age of five, and then live accordingly.

Helen Thomas

#59. It is necessary to take an active part in politics to observe how often the welfare of the party organization is put before the issues, even before the welfare of the commonwealth.

Charles Edison

#60. Politics needs a flexible mind, for it has no immutable or eternal rules. In politics immutable or eternal rules lead to inevitable and swift defeat.

Georgi Plekhanov

#61. So it is that a new politics centers around the arousal of that power, using prayer and meditation to create a force field of transformation.

Marianne Williamson

#62. The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#63. It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

Richard M. Nixon

#64. What does it matter who is ruler of a realm that no longer exists?

Krishna Udayasankar

#65. [D]id you really expect fairness on the environmental issue? For a swathe of reporters, this is not a matter of empirical reporting; it's a matter of faith. Bush cannot be pro-environment because he's Bush.

Andrew Sullivan

#66. If politics were a musical, it would be "Promises, Promises".

Ronald Reagan

#67. I think the fact is that anybody who goes into politics feels like 'I can make a difference'. But it's not one person, you need so many others.

Drew Brees

#68. Oh for 'Shael's sweet sake, girl, you think you can rule an empire without lying? You think your father didn't lie? Or his father? Or any of your goldy-eyed great-great-founders of Annur? It's built into the job. Bakers have flour, fishermen have nets, and leaders have lies.

Brian Staveley

#69. Politics is human beings; it's addition rather than subtraction.

Donald Rumsfeld

#70. I'm not really much into politics, because it's rarely discussed in my line of work.

Tracy Morgan

#71. There is absolutely no difference between religion and politics at all in Jesus' time. In other words, every seemingly religious word that came out of Jesus' mouth had very clear and unmistakable political connotations to it.

Reza Aslan

#72. If there was one thing she found more tedious than thinking about politics it was talking about politics.

Kate Atkinson

#73. Kelsoism is not accepted by modern scientific economics as a valid and fruitful analysis of the distribution of income but rather it is regarded as an amateurish and cranky fad.

Paul Samuelson

#74. Quit demagoguing. It's not true.

Mary Matalin

#75. As long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don't get involved in politics because it's the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam,

Siraj Wahhaj

#76. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy.

G.K. Chesterton

#77. In politics, as in womanizing, failure is decisive. It sheds its retrospective gloom on earlier endeavor which at the time seemed full of promise.

Malcolm Muggeridge

#78. By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves.

Thomas Jefferson

#79. [I]f one asks what substantive contributions [F. A. Hayek] made to our understanding of how the world works, one is left at something of a loss. Were it not for his politics, he would be virtually forgotten.

Paul Krugman

#80. As I've gotten older, I've gotten more liberal, and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents, I practically fell out of my chair.

Lauren Graham

#81. I think it's important that (Roe v. Wade) remain legal for medical reasons and other reasons.

Laura Bush

#82. Art has nothing to do with politics. It is the freest thing in the world.

Tatyana Tolstaya

#83. If it's a man's game so decidedly that a woman would be soiled by entering it, then there is something radically wrong with the American game of politics.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#84. You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.

Jon Stewart

#85. At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

Joyce Carol Oates

#86. The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both.

John Cornyn

#87. I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents' prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it .

Ali Shariati

#88. In politics, they play games. In Hollywood, they play games. I think that, overall, everybody is trying to do whatever it takes to get ahead.

Constance Zimmer

#89. I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old.

Mimsy Sadofsky

#90. My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and discuss with absolute frankness.

Woodrow Wilson

#91. It is about time that the religious and environmental faithful joined forces. No one wins when divisive politics pits the right to human life against the sanctity of biodiversity, or family values against ecosystem services. There are infinite compatible reasons to love, cherish and steward Earth.

Alex Bruce

#92. As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it ... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson

Orson Scott Card

#93. If politics left out the manipulation of money, I would perhaps view it more than a partisan traffic jam that never ends.

Zephyr McIntyre

#94. Women have more to prove than men when it comes to politics.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower

#95. One of the characteristics of modern political life is its professionalization, such that it attracts mainly the kind of people with so great an avidity for power and self-importance that they do not mind very much the humiliations of the public exposure to which they are inevitably subjected.

Theodore Dalrymple

#96. Justice makes the life of such as are in prosperity, power and authority the life of a god, and injustice turns it to that of a beast.

Plutarch

#97. It seems that Russia today - dominated by, and accustomed to, autocracy and empire, and lacking strong civic institutions especially after the shattering of its society by the Bolshevik Terror - is destined to be ruled by self-promoting cliques for some time yet.

Simon Sebag Montefiore

#98. We gotta control inflation, quit spending our money on everything. But this years tax increase, why it's the biggest in history.

Hank Williams Jr.

#99. Politics are about power; we cannot evade that truth or its consequences. We dream of a better world but it is in Utopia - that is, nowhere.

D. W Brogan

#100. It seriously irks me when people mistake Ron Paul for a libertarian. The man is as much a libertarian as Barack Obama is a liberal.

Michel Templet