QUOTES ON POLITICS
People really don’t care if politicians attack each other with untrue stories. They figure if you don’t want to get hurt, you shouldn’t have filed for office. They figure whatever happens to us, our lives will be better than theirs.BILL CLINTON, speech at Campus Progress National Student Conference, July 13, 2005
Politics,
- AMBROSE BIERCE,
HENRIK IBSEN,
You don’t have to wait till your party’s in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world.
BILL CLINTON, speech at Campus Progress National Student Conference, July 13, 2005
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
JOHN DRYDEN,
Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.
- , May 31, 2004-BARACK OBAMA,
- Feb. 14, 1874-FANNY KEMBLE,
RONALD REAGAN
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., Aug. 14, 2006BILLY GRAHAM,
I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.
BARACK OBAMA, MSNBC interview, Sep. 25, 2006
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
MARK TWAIN,
For too long we've been told about "us" and "them." Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that "they" are the problem, not "us." But there can be no "them" in America. There's only us.BILL CLINTON
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.GEORGE WASHINGTON
It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.TOM DELAY, CNN, Jun. 9, 2006
The politician is a biped; but he is probably an aberrant form of hyena.
ABRAHAM MILLER,
I used to say that politics was the second-oldest profession. I have come to know that it bears a gross similarity to the first.
RONALD REAGAN
Finality is not the language of politics.BENJAMIN DISRAELI, speech, Feb. 28, 1859
We’ve come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn’t move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there’s no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face.
, Dec. 11, 2006BARACK OBAMA,
Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.
CALVIN COOLIDGE,
The only motive that can keep politics pure is the motive of doing good for one's country and its people.
HENRY FORD, "Party Politics,"
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
Shrewd and crafty politicians, when they wish to bring about an unpopular measure, must not go straight forward to work, if they do they will certainly fail; and failures to men in power, are like defeats to a general, they shake their popularity. Therefore, since they cannot sail in the teeth of the wind, they must tack, and ultimately gain their object, by appearing at times to be departing from it.CHARLES CALEB COLTON,
A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY,
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
GEORGE ORWELL,
I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, it's like telling the American people or half the American people that don't agree with you they're all fools. That's just not true.
June 1, 2005BILL CLINTON, interview on
Once upon a time there was a politician who made an especially conspicuous ass of himself and didn't say the newspapers misquoted him.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES,
I tell you folks, all politics is applesauce.
