quotations about politics
We need more of the Office Desk and less of the Show Window in politics. Let men in office substitute the midnight oil for the limelight.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Have Faith in Massachusetts
Politics is just show business for ugly people.
JAY LENO
attributed, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
I mean, what happens is, wherever you go anywhere in the world, and leaders start talking to each other you get into a competition as to who's politics is crazy. I always say to people I think we're ahead, but you know it's a lot of people are competing to catch up with us.
TONY BLAIR
interview, CNBC, November 5, 2019
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money ... and I can't remember what the other one is.
F. PAUL WILSON
Implant
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
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 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
A politician don't steal elections, he pays for 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
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
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
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
They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It's time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.
MALCOLM X
speech at Cory Methodist Church, Cleveland, Ohio, "The Ballot or the Bullet", April 3, 1964
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
Madame Politics is like Venus: they whom she decoys into her castle perish.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
The Story of My Life
The politics of the unpolitical--these are the politics of those who desire to be pure in heart: the politics of men without personal ambition; of those who have not desires wealth or an unequal share of worldly possessions; of those who have always striven, whatever their race or condition, for human values and not for national or sectional interests. For our Western world, Christ is the supreme example of this unselfish devotion to the good of humanity, and the Sermon on the Mount is the source of all the politics of the unpolitical.
HERBERT READ
"The Politics of the Unpolitical", To Hell with Culture
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
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
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
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
SIMON CAMERON
attributed, Chronicles of America Series