quotations about politics
I have always believed that politics is first and foremost about ideas; Without a powerful commitment to goals and values, governments are rudderless and ineffective, however large their majorities.
TONY BLAIR
The Third Way
The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays
Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make.
BILL GINDLESPERGER
"Politics is about how many friends, not enemies, you can make", Public Opinion, May 6, 2016
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god--Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Anarchism and Other Essays
For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog.
TONY BLAIR
A Journey: My Political Life
All the politics in the world are nothing else but a kind of analysis of the quantity of probability in casual events, and a good politician signifies no more but one who is dexterous at such calculations.
JOHN ARBUTHNOT
"Of the Hazards of Game", A Supplement to the Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot
When you start looking for some politician's footprints on the sands of time, steer for the mudholes first.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed.
ADRIENNE RICH
"Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying", On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
It takes a certain kind of man to be in politics--a small one.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
Sure, in our system of elections, politicians need to be ambitious and calculating -- calculating how they might win but, more important, how they can advance the public good. They have to have great courage to get up on the public stage and try to get our attention. Of course, some of what they do in a campaign is acting, posturing or showmanship. Politics is always an admixture of personal striving and deliberation over substantive policy differences.
THOMAS E. CRONIN
"Giving up on politics is not an option", The Denver Post, April 30, 2016
Please, I'm a politician's wife. I have a set of my own.
LAUREN BACALL
My Fellow Americans
A typical vice of American politics -- the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The Outlook, July 27, 1912
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech at Royal Albert Hall, May 20, 1965
I think politics is too important to be left to politicians.
CRAIG BROWN
The Independent, 2013