Politics famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
-- A. J. Liebling -
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
-- A. J. P. Taylor -
The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood.
-- A. Powell Davies -
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
-- Abraham Lincoln -
Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don't [sic] want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, wouldtell him that you have reason to believe he is mistaken.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
-- Adam Smith -
The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.
-- Aesop -
That we can be e pluribus Unum - out of one, many
-- Al Gore -
Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend.
-- Al Sharpton -
Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.
-- Alan Bradley -
The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.
-- Alan Bradley -
I don't like politics, hypocrites, folks with poodles...
-- Alan Jackson -
Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below?
-- Alan Jackson -
We ought to be more focused on enemies without than preoccupied with finding them within.
-- Alan Wolfe -
Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.
-- Alasdair MacIntyre -
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein -
Politics is far more complicated than physics.
-- Albert Einstein -
A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory.
-- Albert Einstein -
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.
-- Albert Pike -
In my judgement, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.
-- Alberto Gonzales -
There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible.
-- Alec Douglas-Home -
A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in business to the last.
-- Alexander Pope -
Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.
-- Alexander Pope -
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville -
Violence as a way of gaining power... is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...
-- Alfred Adler -
If somebody's gonna stab me in the back, I wanna be there.
-- Allan A. Lamport -
There's a dishonest tyranny in the liberal/progressive/socialist agenda that comes down and says 'we are here because we care about you; we want what's best for you'. But really what they want is the control of your life.
-- Allen West -
You have an imperial presidency that makes Richard Nixon look like a boy scout.
-- Allen West -
When dealing with Canadians, it is advantageous to seem to be negotiating from a position of weakness, for when faced with an abject opponent, they become concession-happy and will accede to almost anything.
-- Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens -
If a politician isn't doing it to his wife , then he's doing it to his country.
-- Amy Grant -
Big Business and Politics are twins, they are the monsters who kill everything, corrupt everything.
-- Anais Nin -
we cannot cure the evils of politics with politics ...
-- Anais Nin -
[Senator] Kerry [democrat MA] is emerging as the worst of all the viable Democratic candidates. He has the backbone of Clinton and the charm of Gore.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
...when a reporter is quoting Sid Blumenthal on president Bush, you know he's scraping the barrel.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
[Bush Hating] undermines the good faith necessary for democratic discussion. Which is a large part of what people like Al Franken are all about.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
[T]he myth that there was somehow a magic wand in the early 1980s to cure AIDS - a wand that Reagan deliberately refused to wave - is now almost conventional wisdom.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
[D]id you really expect fairness on the environmental issue? For a swathe of reporters, this is not a matter of empirical reporting; it's a matter of faith. Bush cannot be pro-environment because he's Bush.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
I watched Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle. Good grief. What whining weenies.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
Personally, I'd rather have pins stuck in my eyes than endure a conversation with John Kerry, but I'd love to hang with Bush.
-- Andrew Sullivan -
Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he's supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore?
-- Andrew Sullivan -
Those of us who don't have a party affiliation ought to be able to register under the heading "Confused.
-- Andy Rooney -
I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.
-- Aneurin Bevan -
No one's gonna sympathize when we crash, they'll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask.
-- Ani DiFranco -
Poor George [Bush], he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.
-- Ann Richards -
The abuse of children is the worst offence that anybody can commit.
-- Ann Widdecombe -
A man will blithely do in politics what he would kick a man downstairs for in ordinary life.
-- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery -
Do not first announce action, and then, when you are unable to take action, withdraw, because you will only find yourself in the same position as now, plus a public and humiliating confession of impotence.
-- Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery -
Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
-- Aristotle -
...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.
-- Aristotle -
Now property is part of a household, and the acquisition of property part of household-management; for neither life itself nor the good life is possible without a certain minimum supply of the necessities.
-- Aristotle -
Property should be in a general sense common, but as a general rule private... In well-ordered states, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use of them.
-- Aristotle -
In Washington, DC, politics dominate even the most casual conversations.
-- Armstrong Williams -
That eugenics was part of the progressive agenda is one of the most heavily-airbrushed features of history.
-- Arnold Kling -
I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained.
-- Arthur Balfour -
At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
Constitution is for the people, people are not for the constitution. Change it for the betterment of the common man.
-- Arvind Kejriwal -
I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.
-- Ayn Rand -
I can't afford no liquor, all I can buy is beer and wine.
-- B. B. King -
A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.
-- Barack Obama -
Our destiny is not written for us, but by us.
-- Barack Obama -
As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
-- Barbara Brown Taylor -
If we promise as public officials, we must deliver. If we as public officials propose, we must produce.
-- Barbara Jordan -
Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.
-- Barney Frank -
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits; monarchies by poverty.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process.
-- Barry Goldwater -
The media are doing this, not because they have a sinister motive, but because they love to feel that they are influencing events. That's why they hate politicians so much, because politicians have direct power and they do not.
-- Ben Aaronovitch -
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Finality is not the language of politics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Information upon points of practical politics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Principle is ever my motto, no expediency.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
The test of political institutions is the condition of the country whose future they regulate.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
-- Berkeley Breathed -
The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.
-- Bernard Crick -
Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupations of free men, and its existences is a test of freedom.
-- Bernard Crick
