Top 86 Quotes About Money In Politics
#1. In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.
Lawrence Lessig
#2. "Freedom" in capitalist countries exists only for those who possess money and who consequently hold power.
Nikita Khrushchev
#3. Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other.
Gloria Steinem
#4. 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.
#5. I love politics, but I wouldn't want to be involved in it. Too little money, too much work!
Dennis Quaid
#6. Money is power in American politics. It always has been.
William Greider
#7. I don't get involved in politics. I think that it is a waste of time and money because very often a politician cannot do much, and if you give him money, you embarrass him, so he can't do anything.
Harry Triguboff
#8. It is more important for Labour to raise the reputation of politics than for the Tories, who are only in politics for the money.
Frank Dobson
#9. Big money, big Liberal Party politics and big media are trying to get rid of us, of course, by letting Packer take over Fairfax - a media-only company. But we're hanging in there and doing the best job we can for our readers while we can.
Margo Kingston
#10. William "Boss" Tweed was in such thorough control in New York that he made money off of the report the committee printed after investigating him.
H.W. Brands
#11. I don't believe that art and politics or social issues must be separated. In writing about marriage, for example, money can be a big factor, and money is linked to earning, and earning is influenced by politics.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#12. It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.
Robert Byrd
#13. Bike lanes - I put that now in the category of things you shouldn't discuss at dinner parties, right? It used to be money and politics and religion. Now, in New York, you should add bike lanes.
Christine Quinn
#14. Don't get politics mixed up in this. It's all about money and it makes no difference if the Social Democrats or the moderates appoint the ministers
Stieg Larsson
#15. Where there's corruption in government, somebody or everybody's making a lot of money. That makes it dangerous.
Kenneth Eade
#16. If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent.
Thomas Sowell
#17. Neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power
John Money
#18. I have the most reliable friend you can have in American politics, and that is ready money.
Phil Gramm
#19. The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.
Lysander Spooner
#20. Money is the original sin in politics and I am not sinless.
Barack Obama
#21. People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic.They have some issue. They have some interest.It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.
David Brooks
#22. If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons, who are cosseted in a world where rich people endlessly scratch the backs of rich people.
Maureen Dowd
#23. In U.S. politics, 'compassion' means giving money and privileges to well organized interest groups at everyone else's expense.
Paul Craig Roberts
#24. The way to solve all the money in politics is not to pretend we can get money out of politics. That will never happen. We have to channel it in ways where we can see it and hold it accountable. And I think the parties are the best vehicle for that.
Mark Shields
#25. Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#26. The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Thomas Jefferson
#27. I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.
Mohsin Hamid
#28. I think the very best attitude for anyone investing in the stock market is to make up his mind to lose money.
- The Duchess Gloriana XII
Leonard Wibberley
#29. There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is.
Mark Hanna
#30. Does anyone need yet another politician caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole?
Lou Reed
#31. Can anyone name a president who really had the citizens in mind during the majority of his decisions in office? None of them did, and the current ones don't either. It's all about power, keeping power, and dishing out power to those who throw the most money at them.
Charlie Donlea
#32. The rich control our politics to a huge extend. In return they get tax cuts and deregulation. It's been and is an amazing ride for the rich.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
#33. Doing politics in a democracy costs money for campaigning and getting our message across and that's what we intend to do.
Hazel Blears
#34. If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics.
Brian Redman
#35. [Donald Trump] doesn't have the money to run commercials and I launched into a tirade on money in politics.
Rush Limbaugh
#36. Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.
James Hansen
#37. Money has always been in politics. And I'm not sure you'd want money to be completely out of politics.
Bill Gates
#38. The appalling reality in American politics today is that, when ideology and money mix, truth is a mere inconvenience.
David Horsey
#39. All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
Thomas Piketty
#40. In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch.
Douglas Wilder
#41. To my mind, if we do not get a handle on money in politics and the degree to which big money controls the political process in this country, nobody is going to bring about the changes that is needed in this country for the middle class and working families.
Bernie Sanders
#42. You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.
Bruce Sterling
#43. The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1
Alexis De Tocqueville
#44. Money is the fuel that makes political victory possible. Sadly, folks, in many cases it's more important than ideas. And this is what turns off so many people to politics.
Rush Limbaugh
#45. The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money
the importance of government in allocating wealth and opportunity.
George Will
#46. The money in politics is a cash cow for the media.
Noam Chomsky
#47. Savers have to be punished so debtors can be saved.
Why? Because if debtors are rescued, that makes it possible for more debts to be issued in the future.
And why is that important? Because the banking system needs ever more loans in order to survive.
Chris Martenson
#48. I personally think money in politics on any level is horrible. I'd like to see a set amount and have every candidate spend it. Have it be completely transparent. But actually getting to that spot, as we have learned through all the legislation over the decades, is very difficult.
Rick Santelli
#49. Experience in other countries shows how big money, rather than the best political candidate, can influence politics.
Andrew Lansley
#50. Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.
Nina Easton
#51. I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill
it finds its way.
Jonathan Alter
#52. If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.
Henry A. Wallace
#53. A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.
Henry A. Wallace
#55. People who do not believe in the same god or obey the same king are more than willing to use the same money. Osama Bin Laden, for all his hatred of American culture, American religion and American politics, was very fond of American dollars. How did money succeed where gods and kings failed?
Yuval Noah Harari
#56. As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.
Molly Ivins
#57. Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.
Graham Greene
#58. Paper money will invariably operate in the body of politics as spirit liquors on the human body. They prey on the vitals and ultimately destroy them
George Washington
#59. Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.
Olympia Snowe
#60. The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes.
Richard L. Hasen
#61. There can only be democracy when money is not allowed to be spent in Politics.
Imran Khan
#62. These various interests are well organized, command more wealth than most modern nations, and are represented in Congress with a strength far greater than is justified in any constitutional or democratic sense. (Modern politics is expensive - power follows money.)
Edward Abbey
#63. I have donated money to campaigns. And I have been known to take to the street in protest. But I am more committed to my immediate politics than general politics.
Natalie Massenet
#64. In the old days, money controlled politics. Today, information controls politics. So I think with the advent of the Internet, the power of wealth has been diminished. Look up all the people you know who spent millions and millions of dollars and fell short.
Foster Friess
#65. As for the politicians, like everyone else in America, they were motivated by money, not ideals.
Charles Dickens
#66. We're more concerned about climate or economic equality or racial justice or anything else that is good for people and the planet, we simply must also spend some time wresting back our money-marinated democracy. This will require getting money out of politics and then getting people back in.
Annie Leonard
#67. Bob Dole revealed he is one of the test subjects for Viagra. He said on Larry King, 'I wish I had bought stock in it.' Only a Republican would think the best part of Viagra is the fact that you could make money off of it.
Jay Leno
#68. In sectors like energy, I haven't been arguing for more spending per se; I've been arguing that it doesn't make sense for us to spend $4 billion subsidizing an oil industry that's mature and very profitable. We should be using that money to finance clean energy of the future.
Barack Obama
#69. People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts ... There's a simple way to keep money out of politics: Keep politics out of our money.
Sheldon Richman
#70. Whether you are on the Right or the Left, everyone can agree that there are a lot of outside influences in American politics that are not good for the system. There's just too much money.
Zach Galifianakis
#71. I would like to have an ample fund to spread the light of Republicanism, but I am willing to undergo the disadvantage to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics for unworthy purposes.
William Howard Taft
#72. The only tool we have to fix the problems of this country - the democratic process - is itself broken. Which is why nothing will fundamentally change until we solve the problem of money in politics.
Arianna Huffington
#73. The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly, if that's the best job you can get in terms of money, that's too bad, you know. Because frankly, it's not well paid, everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.
Malcolm Turnbull
#74. When a man comes to your house with a bag full of money, he certainly has seen more in your backyard than in the bag.
M.F. Moonzajer
#75. Take for instance, a society where the prevailing value system is that you only go into politics and leadership to serve and not to make money. In such a nation, people know that those who go into politics and leadership come out of it poorer than they went in.
Sunday Adelaja
#77. Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.
Caroline Kennedy
#78. If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them
and it won't be you; you can't afford them.
Juan Cole
#80. Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was.
Diane Watson
#81. What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all cost?
The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and of virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#82. You can make money in a small way without politics. But to make big money, you need to buy the legislature. Can't be done otherwise.
Edward Rutherfurd
#83. Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest - that they're just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats.
David Suzuki
#84. Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing projects we've got the poor people in.
P. J. O'Rourke
#85. What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.
Molly Ivins
#86. In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.
Thomas Sowell
