Quotes on Politics

Quotes in
Sorted by
Author
Subject
Text
35 quotes     Show as list

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. 
 
A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.
 
We need to stop looking to politicians to make our world better. Politicians don't make the world a better place. Everything that's ever made the world a better place has come from inventors, engineers, scientists, teachers, artists, builders, philosophers, healers, and people that choose love over hate.
 
No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
 
To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.
 
If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.
 
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But, though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.
 
You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy", and the other "tyranny".
 
When it comes to politics, the facts far exceed our curiosity."
 
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist, and too rich to be a communist.
 
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
 
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
 
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
 
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
 
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
 
If you look in general at people who live in anarchy, they have quite high rates of death from either homicide or warfare or both. Anarchy is one of the main reasons for violence, and it may be the most important.
 
Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
 
POLITICS: War Without Bloodshed.
 
Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reason.
 
Demagogy leads to bigger disasters than the ones it promised to prevent.
 
Only the consciousness of a purpose that is greater than any man can seed and fortify the souls of men.
 
As you go further away from experience, you go higher into generalization or subtlety. As you go up in the balloon you throw more and more concrete objects overboard, and when you have reached the top with some phrase like the Rights of Humanity or the World Made Safe for Democracy, you see far and wide, but you see very little.
 
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
 
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
 
CONSERVATIVE: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
 
People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.
 
Trump can run for president with no political experience but I need a masters and 5 years experience for an entry level job.
 
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
 
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
 
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. 
 
BOUNDARY: In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
 
The interests of an economically dominant class never stand naked. They are enshrouded in the flag, fortified by the law, protected by the police, nurtured by the media, taught by the schools, and blessed by the church.
 
The essential ingredient of politics is timing.
 
Industry is a far better horse to ride a genius.
 
Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.
 
35 quotes     Show as list