Politics Quotes

We have collected and put the best politics quotes about the meaning of life from around the world. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these politics quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

Politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a global, civic or individual level. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance — organized control over a human community, particularly a state or civilization. Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community (a hierarchically organized population) as well as the interrelationship(s) between communities and states.

Politics is the art of managing a nation’s affairs in ways that please God and people. As long as a government protects people from evil and defends them from oppression, it can be considered successful in politics and full of promise. If a government does not do so, it can no longer remain in power, leaving behind turmoil amidst the sounds of cursing. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Good administration and politics are characterized by acknowledging rights, the law’s superiority, and consciousness of one’s duty, as well as placing responsible people in crude and difficult jobs and skilled and experienced people in refined and delicate jobs. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Rather than a government’s saying “My nation,” it’s more important that the nation says “My government.” If the nation sees the government as a host of parasites, it means that the body has long since broken off from the head. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Government means justice and public order. One cannot speak of government where these do not exist. – M. Fethullah Gulen

If the officials running a good and virtuous state are chosen because of their nobility in spirit, ideas, and feelings, the state will be good and strong. A government run by officials who lack these high qualities is still a government, but it is neither good nor long-lasting. Sooner or later, its officials’ bad behavior will appear as dark spots on its face and blacken it in the people’s eyes. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Public officials should be kind, stay within the law, and have soft hearts. These characteristics will protect their esteem and honor and those of the law and the state. Remember that extreme harshness causes unexpected explosions, and extreme softness causes the rapid breeding of harmful ideas. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Laws should be effective all the time, everywhere, and for everyone. Those who enforce them should be brave and just so that the masses will have some fear of them, but not to the extent that they no longer trust or feel secure under the law’s enforcers. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Magnificent nations produce magnificent governments. It is the generations with high spirituality, scientific power, financial opportunities and broad consciousness, and the individuals struggling to be “themselves”, that form magnificent nations. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Unity of feeling, thought, and culture are essential to a nation’s strength; any disintegration of religious and moral unity causes it to weaken. – M. Fethullah Gulen

There is a policy for everything. The policy for renewing a nation is to ignore your own pleasure, to feel joy only with the nation’s pleasures, and to feel sorrow only with its pain. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Mature people never make the difference of thought and opinions a means of conflict. However, no one has the right to tolerate those understandings and views that separate people into camps and destroy society. Tolerance of division means closing one’s eye to the nation’s extinction. – M. Fethullah Gulen

People who don’t think like you might be very sincere and beneficial, so do not oppose every idea that seems contradictory and scare them off. Seek ways to benefit from their opinions and ideas, and strike up a dialogue with them. Otherwise, those who are kept at a distance and led to dissatisfaction because they don’t think like us will form huge masses that confront and smash us. Even if such dissatisfied people have never achieved anything positive, the number of states they’ve destroyed is beyond counting. – M. Fethullah Gulen

People must learn how to benefit from other people’s knowledge and views which will be beneficial to their own system, thought, and world. Especially, they should never neglect benefiting from the experiences of the experienced. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Those who understand politics as political parties, propaganda, elections, and the struggle for power are mistaken. Politics is the art of management, based on a broad perspective of today, tomorrow, and the day after, that seeks the people’s satisfaction and God’s approval. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Power’s dominance is transitory; while truth’s and justice’s dominance is eternal. Even if these do not exist today, they will be victorious in the very near future. For this reason, sincere politicians should align themselves and their policies with truth and justice. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. – Winston Churchill

A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate – Eric Idle

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life – Robert Byrne

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood – Fred Thompson

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last. – Winston Churchill

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians – Charles Krauthammer

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. – Will Rogers

I love to go to Washington – if only to be near my money – Bob Hope

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here – Harry S. Truman

If I wanted to go crazy I would do it in Washington because it would not be noticed – Irwin S. Cobb

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read “President Can’t Swim.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill, we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one – Plato

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap – Napoleon Bonaparte

In the long run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government – Thomas Carlyle

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you – Pericles

Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason and invective for documentation than in politics – John Mason Brown

Perhaps at the end of the day we have to accept the limitations of our politicians. Instead of expecting greatness, maybe we should just expect the honesty and integrity to do the best they can.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated. – Will Rogers

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first – Ronald Reagan

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy – Ernest Benn

Politics is the art of the possible – Otto Von Bismarck

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other – Oscar Ameringer

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts – Henry Adams

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other. – Will Rogers

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop – P. J. O’Rourke

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law – Aristotle

The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back. – Will Rogers

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. – Will Rogers

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite – John Kenneth Galbraith

Under every stone lurks a politician – Aristophanes

We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics – Hubert H. Humphrey

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office – Aesop

We have the best government that money can buy – Mark Twain

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else. – Winston Churchill

About Politicians

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen – Winston Churchill

A politician thinks of the next election – a statesman of the next generation – James Freeman Clarke

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere – Mark Twain

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen – Bob Edwards

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word – Charles De Gaulle

Statesmen tell you what is true even though it may be unpopular. Politicians will tell you what is popular, even though it may be untrue – Anonymous

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress …. But I repeat myself – Mark Twain

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber – Plato

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators – PJ O’Rourke

About Party Politics

I’m a great believer in democracy, but unfortunately the natural tendency of politicians in democracies is to gather together into political parties. And the natural tendency of parties is to spend their entire working lives mindlessly attacking each other, rather than listening and working together for a better life. I’m not a great believer in political parties.

No one party can fool all of the people all of the time; that’s why we have two parties – Bob Hope

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party – Winston Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries – Winston Churchill

There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen – Anonymous

[A Conservative is] a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others – Ambrose Bierce

Funny Quotes on politics

For NASA, space is still a high priority – Dan Quayle

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves – Ronald Reagan

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and fifty for Miss America? – Anonymous

If ‘pro’ is the opposite of ‘con’ what is the opposite of ‘progress’? – Paul Harvey

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom – Plato

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind – George Orwell

Tell the truth and you won’t have so much to remember – Abraham Lincoln

The problem with political jokes is they get elected – Henry Cate VII

The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites.’ – Larry Hardiman

When the political columnists say ‘Every thinking man’ they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to ‘Every intelligent voter’ they mean everybody who is going to vote for them – Franklin P. Adams

Quotes From Wikiquote

• Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.
  • Lord Acton in ‘Nationality’, in The Home and Foreign Review (July 1862).
  • Alternative version quoted in Arrillaga, Pauline (21 October 2006). “On the Road with Texas Candidate Kinky”. Associated Press (via Yahoo! News). Retrieved on 2008-03-19.

• All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  • Lord Acton, letter to Mandell Creighton, April 1887. Reprinted in John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, 1949, Boston:The Beacon Press, p. 364.

• Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
  • Lord Acton, “Freedom in Antiquity”, in The History of Freedom and Other Essays: And Other Essays‎ (1907), p. 22.

• There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies.
  • Anonymous, Economist 375: 8432 (25 June 2005), p. 84.

• Man is by nature a political animal.
  • Aristotle, Politics, chapter 2 (Bekker I.1253a2).

• The shifty language of politics,… that strange language full of Maya and falsities of self-illusion and deliberate delusion of others, which almost immediately turns all true and vivid phrases into a jargon, so that men may fight in a cloud of words without any clear sense of the thing they are battling for….
  • Sri Aurobindo, September, 1918, quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India’s rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo’s writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). [1]

• POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

• POLITICS, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

• PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
  • Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary.

• Political technology determines political success.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• Sound doctrine is sound politics.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• In politics, you have your word and your friends; go back on either and you’re dead.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• In volunteer politics, a builder can build faster than a destroyer can destroy.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• In politics, nothing moves unless it’s pushed.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics.
  • Morton C. Blackwell in Laws of Politics.

• Politics is not an exact science.
  • Die Politik ist keine exakte Wissenschaft.
  • Otto von Bismarck, speech to Prussian upper house (18 December 1863)
  • Variant: Die Politik ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich einbilden, sondern eine Kunst.
    • Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.
    • Expression in the Reichstag (1884), as quoted in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes.

• Die Politik ist die Lehre vom Möglichen.
  • Politics is the art of the possible.
  • Otto von Bismarck, remark to Meyer von Waldeck, 11 August 1867. Quoted in Heinz Amelung, Bismarck-Worte, 1918; as reported in The Yale Book of Quotations, Yale University Press, 2006. This is widely attributed to Bismarck but there is no firsthand account of his exact words, as discussed in Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier, Macmillan, 2006.

• Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?
  • Art Buchwald,Quotations for our Time by Laurence J. Peter (1977).

• Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
  • George Burns, quoted in Antony Jay, Lend Me Your Ears: The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations. Oxford University Press, (p.49-50).

• An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
  • Attributed to Simon Cameron by Allen Johnson, Chronicles of America Series, Yale University Press, 1918. (Cameron was forced to resign as United States Secretary of War in 1862, due to allegations of corruption).

• The pendulum will swing back.
  • Joseph Gurney Cannon, maxim indicating that in life and politics the things detested today may be praised tomorrow. Quoted in a tribute to Cannon on his retirement, The Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, March 4, 1923.—Congressional Record, March 4, 1923, vol. 64, p. 5714. “Uncle Joe” Cannon, who was Speaker of the House 1903–1911, served in the House for 46 years.

• Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.
  • Often quoted by Arthur C. Clarke as one of his favorite remarks of Jawaharlal Nehru, though some of his earliest citations of it, in Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967), p. 154 indicate that Nehru may himself been either quoting or paraphrasing a statement of Vinoba Bhave.

• In my whole legal career I have not met worse types of criminals than in politics.
  • Chittaranjan Das, quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India’s rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo’s writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). [2]

• Finality is not the language of politics.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons, 28 February 1859.

• Politicians are like nappies, they should be changed regularly and for the same reason.
  • Ken Dodd
  • This quote has been credited to multiple sources, including Mark Twain, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz (translated from Portuguese), and “unknown, originated around 1992” (see The Quote Investigator entry “Politicians Are Like Diapers. They Should Be Changed Regularly” and The Big Apple, Entry from December 12, 2009: “Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason”). It may have originated in a Readers Digest joke column. A columnist for the Indiana Gazette quotes a version of this (February 17, 1987) that he says he got from someone who got it from a “Readers Digest fan.”

• The true destiny of America is religious, not political: it is spiritual, not physical.
  • Alvin R. Dyer in Ensign (November 1968)

• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted by Virgil Henshaw in Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) edited by Paul A. Schilpp

• That is simple, my friend. It is because Politics is more difficult than physics.
  • Albert Einstein when asked “Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?” a conferee at a meeting at Princeton, N.J. (Jan 1946), as recalled by Greenville Clark in “Letters to the Times” in New York Times (22 Apr 1955), 24.

• Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen.
  • Dwight Eisenhower
  • Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907: ch. 22.

• Soloviev: All liberal, capitalistic, socialistic movements are directed by Jews. We must expose them. They are the anti-christ!

Golivinski: But sir, shouldn’t we keep this political?

Soloviev: In Russia religion and politics are the same! Our people will believe anything negative about the Jews! Go ahead boy!

• Will Eisner, The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (10/2/2005), p. 48.

• Researcher: In almost every country there are people trying to seize political power! What is the easy way?

Graphic novelist: Well…I guess by identifying a felt threat to the people and leading a defense!
So you pick a group of people who are vulnerable and could seem to be a threat!

• Ibid, p. 115.

• Whether or not our position fairly can be charged as “apolitical” depends entirely upon how one defines “political.” If “political” be taken in the narrow sense, as signifying those means and methods the world regularly accepts as normative for its doing of politics, then the position of me and mine clearly and is that of apoliticism. If, however, “political” be understood in the broad, etymological sense, as identifying whatever actions have public effect upon the life of the “city” (polis), then there are no grounds for accusing either “me” or any of “mine” of advocating apoliticism.
  • Vernard Eller, Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers (1987).

• 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, interviewed in “How the Church will change” by Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica (1 October 2013), as translated from Italian to English by Kathryn Wallace

• … that is the nature of politics: poly, meaning more than one, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking parasites.
  • Kinky Friedman, attributed by him to “some guy in Corpus”
  • Quoted in Taylor, Michael Ray (October 11, 2007). “Poly-Ticks as Unusual”. Nashville Scene. Retrieved on 2008-03-19.

• There’s no real power in Politics. Every day, it’s all about whose turn it is to get punched in the face.
  • Ricky Gervais, in “Dead Funny”, an Interview with Graham Wray in Event, a Mail on Sunday weekend magazine, 06.04.2014, P. 15.

• Life isn’t binary — and neither is politics. If you are adrift in the ocean, your enemy isn’t just sharks; it’s thirst, hunger, drowning, and despair itself. If you face your predicament assuming the only thing you have to worry about is being eaten by a shark, you might fend off the sharks, but you will also probably die. Indeed, by ignoring other threats, you’d probably make yourself more vulnerable to a shark attack.
  • Jonah Goldberg, “War on the Right” (4 May 2018), National Review

• We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.
  • Samuel Gompers, “Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing” (editorial), American Federationist (May 1906)

• They [governments] talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the fools and the suckers.
  • Graham Greene, The Third Man.

• Nothing lies outside the political sphere understood in this way. Everything has a political color. It is always in the political fabric – and never outside of it – that a person emerges as a free and responsible being, as a person in relationship with other people, as someone who takes on a historical task. Personal relationships themselves acquire an ever-increasing political dimension. Man enter into relationships among themselves through political means.
  • Gustavo Gurierrez, A Theology of Liberation

• I’ll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. “I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.” “I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.” “Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!”
  • Bill Hicks, Rant in E-Minor (released posthumously, 1997).

• It has been pointed out often enough that politics takes on religious overtones when religion proper withers, at any rate among intellectuals.
  • Paul Hollander, The Survival of the Adversary Culture (1991), Transaction Publishers, pp. 157–158

• 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 (1990), Chatto Counterblasts.

• That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
  • Thomas Huxley in “Universities, Actual & Ideal”

• I will have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics. I part company with the Congress and Gandhi. I do not believe in working up mob hysteria. Politics is a gentleman’s game.
  • Muhammad Ali Jinnah speaking to journalist Durga Das in London (December 1920) as quoted in Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity : The Search for Saladin (1997) by Akbar S. Ahmed, p. 67.

• Politics is momentum.
  • Gary Johnson, in an interview with CNBC´s John Harwood [3] (August 22, 2016).

• Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, letter to John F. Kennedy, 2 March 1962, printed in Galbraith’s Ambassador’s Journal (1969).

• Despite the intentions of human politics, history has shown that it is often the one, not the many, who have led the world towards its destiny… now turn your eyes to Earth once more and tell me what you see.
  • Uatu, Earth X, ch. 3, written by Jim Krueger and Alex Ross

• … for our English grumbling is equally distributed between the weather and politics, and the case would be desperate when confined to the last.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol. I, Chapter 18.

• Politics: a Trojan horse race.
  • Stanisław Jerzy Lec, in Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) as translated by Jacek Galazka (1962).

• Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.
  • Vladimir Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913), p. 5.

• People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
  • Vladimir Lenin, On Culture and Cultural Revolution, p. 40

• “I didn’t know that you were into politics.”
  “Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”
  • Paul J. McAuley, Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988) Chapter 3, “The Keep”

• Politics is about being able to do things that your colleagues couldn’t do, and for them to recognize that. What marks out successful leaders from the unsuccessful is their decisiveness, courage and clarity – a strategic vision.
  • David Miliband, The World Wars (2014).

• As far I’m concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they’re just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we’re fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  • Alan Moore [4] (2006/03) ^{[citation needed]}

• [T]he only mark-to-market thing in politics is Election Day; everything else is hot air.
  • Mike Murphy, interview with Bill Kristol (7 February 2018), transcript

• Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 1944.

• Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Part I, Chapter 11, “Vom neuen Götzen” (“The New Idol”). Published in four parts between 1883 and 1891 Another translation: “But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.”

• There’s an increasing sense in our political life that in both parties politicians call themselves public servants but act like bosses who think that voters work for them. Physicians who routinely help the needy and the uninsured do not call themselves servants. They get to be called the 1%. Politicians who jerk around doctors, nurses and health systems call themselves servants, when of course they look more like little kings and queens instructing the grudging peasants in how to arrange their affairs.
  • Peggy Noonan, “Our Selfish ‘Public Servants’,” The Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, January 18-19, 2014, A13

• I think it’s great that we (in the USA) have multiple female presidential candidates, so there’s not the woman running… I’m very excited about there being multiple women across — that can represent different parts of the political spectrum on the left, so that’s something that I’m thankful for… what we’re trying to do is is frame the debate and the conversation… that we’re going to be having in the next two years…
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her First Weeks In Washington, The Intercept (28 January 2019)

• When citizens are relatively equal, politics has tended to be fairly democratic. When a few individuals hold enormous amounts of wealth, democracy suffers. The reason for this pattern is simple. Through campaign contributions, lobbying, influence over public discourse, and other means, wealth can be translated into political power. When wealth is highly concentrated—that is, when a few individuals have enormous amounts of money—political power tends to be highly concentrated, too. The wealthy few tend to rule. Average citizens lose political power. Democracy declines.
  • Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 19

• Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
  • Terry Pratchett, Mort, p.184 (2009).

• Perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and seeing it, to found one in himself. But whether it exists anywhere or ever exists is no matter; for this is the only commonwealth in whose politics he can ever take part.
  • Plato, Republic 592b

• All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
  • John Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain (Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 151.

• I can’t help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from ’em by calling ’em the masses and then you accuse ’em of not having any faces.
  • J. B. Priestley in Saturn Over the Water (1961) ch. 2.

• All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.
  • Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, C. Moncrieff, trans. (1982), p. 495.

• Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.
  • Henri Queuille, The Bureaucrat (1985).

• 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 (1963), p. 38.

• I don’t make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts.
  • Will Rogers, quoted in Colton, Joel; Caroline Farrar Ware (1972). The Twentieth Century. Nineteenth Century and After. pp. page 9. Retrieved on 2008-03-19.

• In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
  • Carl Sagan (1987) Keynote address at CSICOP conference, as quoted in Do Science and the Bible Conflict? (2003) by Judson Poling, p. 30.

• Political systems are self-destructive constructs. They possess a de-evolutionary or cannibalizing nature, locked firmly within closed-ended structures, micromanaged from top tiers, and endowed with an overwhelming capacity to crank out external controls in assembly-line fashion. With clockwork precision, these systems manufacture rules and a legal apparatus which in turn erect artificial barriers to prevent the optimizing processes of evolution and information fluidity.
  • L.K. Samuels, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, Cobden Press (2013) p. 11.

• Money and generous benefits can easily alter a person’s political outlook. Ideology follows the money.
  • L.K. Samuels, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, Cobden Press (2013) p. 301.

• Campaign promises are—by long democratic tradition—the least binding form of human commitment.
  • Antonin Scalia, Republican Party v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002) (majority opinion).

• I was dealing with a political story where much of the action took place on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and one of the edicts that came down from the Mt. Sinai of advertisers row was that at no time in a political drama must a speech or a character be equated with an existing political party or current political problems. So several million viewers were treated to an incredible display of senators shouting, gesticulating and talking in hieroglyphics, saying not a single thing germane to the current political scene.
  • Rod Serling, Patterns, (1957); as quoted in “Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval”, American Masters, (November 29, 1995).

• Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan in The Duenna, Act ii, scene 4.

• I have no faith in political arithmetic.
  • Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations.

• Politics: the art of convincing decent people to forget the lesser of two evils is also evil.
  • Edward Snowden, Twitter June 11, 2016

• To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect.
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reported in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Correspondence, Writings, Speeches (1981), p. 249.

• The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring, as Dick Nixon would say.
  • Roger Stone, as quoted in “Debriefing Mike Murphy” (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard

• “Our ideas” are only partly our ideas. Most of our ideas are abbreviations or residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers’ teachers; they are abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past. These thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and discussion. It may even be presumed that they were once perfectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the transformation was effected consciously and with full clarity. … This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.
  • Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (1959), p. 73

• [P]olitics is always just a few steps away from The Lord of the Flies…
  • Charlie J. Sykes, “The Derangement of the American Mind” (October 2018), The Weekly Standard

• Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence.
  • Henry David Thoreau, “Life Without Principle”, The Atlantic Monthly 12 71, October 1863: pp. 484–495.

• That who votes doesn’t win in politics. It is that who counts votes.
  • Borislav Ristić, quoted in: “Lako je penzionerima koji imaju žive roditelje” Večernji list. Published 30-06-2018.
• The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, chapter 13 (1835–1840).

• The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

• Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people.
  • J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.^{[page needed]}

• A leader has to lead, or otherwise he has no business in politics.
  • Harry Truman, reported in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974), p. 422.

• Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
  • Paul Valéry, Tel Quel (1943).

• Take the so-called politics of fear — the constant reference to risks, from hoodies on the street corner to international terrorism. Whatever the truth of these risks and the best ways of dealing with them, the politics of fear plays on an assumption that people cannot bear the uncertainties associated with them. Politics then becomes a question of who can better deliver an illusion of control.
  • Mark Vernon; quoted in “God. Who knows?”. BBC News. 4 December 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-10.

• The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
  • George Washington, Farewell Address (1796).

• Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they’re defending us against the Mongols?
  • Edward Whittemore, Nile Shadows (1983).

• I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne’s Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest.
  • Colin Wilson in Postscript to the Outsider , p. 2 (1967).

• Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as in politics.
  • William Dwight Whitney, Language and the Study of Language: Twelve Lectures on the Principles of Linguistic Science (1868), p. 150.

• A cult is a religion with no political power.
  • Tom Wolfe, In Our Time, “Entr’actes and Canapes”,1980.

• Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
  • Mao Zedong, “On Protracted War” (May 1938)

• Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
  • Mao Zedong, “The Little Red Book”.

• Man is by nature a civic animal.
  • Aristotle, Politics I. 2.

• All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
  • Attributed to John Arbuthnot in Life of Emerson’, p. 165.

• You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
  • Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France Volume III, p. 277.

• Of this stamp is the cant of, not men, but measures.
  • Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent. Phrase used in letter by Earl of Shelburne (July 11, 1765), before Burke’s use of it.

• Away with the cant of “Measures, not men!”—the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.
  • George Canning, speech against the Addington Ministry (1801).

• One of the greatest of Romans, when asked what were his politics, replied, “Imperium et libertas.” That would not make a bad programme for a British Ministry.
  • Randolph Churchill, speech, Mansion House, London (Nov. 10, 1879).

• Here the two great interests IMPERIUM ET LIBERTAS, res olim insociabiles (saith Tacitus), began to incounter each other.
  • Sir Winston Churchill (1620–1688) Divi Britannici, p. 849. (1675).

• It is a condition which confronts us—not a theory.
  • Grover Cleveland, Annual Message (1887).

• Information upon points of practical politics.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, Vivian Gray, Chapter XIV. Given by Walsh as first appearance of the phrase “practical politics”.

• All political power is a trust.
  • Charles James Fox (1788).

• Oh! we’ll give ’em Jessie
  When we rally round the polls.
  • Popular song of Fremont’s Supporters in the Presidential Campaign of 1856.

• Measures, not men, have always been my mark.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Good-Natured Man, Act II.

• Who, born for the universe, narrow’d his mind,
  And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 31.

• Who will burden himself with your liturgical parterre when the burning questions [brennende Fragen] of the day invite to very different toils?
  • Karl Rudolf Hagenbach, Grundlinien der Liturgik und Homiletik (1803). “Burning question” used by Edward Miall, M.P., also by Disraeli in the House of Commons (March, 1873).

• Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Tench Coxe (1799).

• If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.
  • Usually quoted, “Few die and none resign.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elias Shipman and Merchants of New Haven (July 12, 1801).

• Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elias Shipman and Merchants of New Haven (July 12, 1801). Paraphrased as “Put the right man in the right place” by John Bach McMaster, History of the People of the United States Volume II, p. 586.

• Skilled to pull wires he baffles nature’s hope, who sure intended him to stretch a rope.
  • James Russell Lowell, The Boss (referring to “Boss Tweed”).

• Factions among yourselves; preferring such
  To offices and honors, as ne’er read
  The elements of saving policy;
  But deeply skilled in all the principles
  That usher to destruction.
  • Philip Massinger, The Bondman, Act I, scene 3, line

• Every time I fill a vacant office I make ten malcontents and one ingrate.
  • Molière, quoting Louis XIV, Siècle de Louis Quatorze.

• Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.
  • John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, Rousseau, p. 380.

• Car c’est en famille, ce n’est pas en public, qu’un lave son linge sale.
  • But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen.
  • Napoleon I of France, on his return from Elba, speech to the Legislative Assembly.

• Better a hundred times an honest and capable administration of an erroneous policy than a corrupt and incapable administration of a good one.
  • Edward John Phelps, at a dinner of the New York Chamber of Commerce (Nov. 19, 1889).

• A weapon that comes down as still
  As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
  But executes a freeman’s will,
  As lightning does the will of God;
  And from its force, nor doors nor locks
  Can shield you; ’tis the ballot-box.

  • John Pierpont, A Word from a Petitioner.

• Old politicians chew on wisdom past,
  And totter on in business to the last.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle I, line 228.

• A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect.
  • Horace Porter, A Bon-Mot in Cleveland Blaine Campaign, (1884).

• Abstain from beans.
  • Pythagoras. Advice against political voting, which was done by means of beans. See Lucian Gallus, IV. 5. Vitarum Auctio. Sect. 6. The superstition against beans was prevalent in Egypt however. See Herodotus, II. 37, also Sextus Empiricus. Explanations to abstain from beans from lost treatise of Aristotle in Diog. Laertes, VIII. 34. Beans had an oligarchical character on account of their use in voting. Plutarch gives a similar explanation in De Educat, Chapter XVII. Caution against entering public life, for the votes by which magistrates were elected were originally given by beans. Pythagoras referred to by Jeremy Taylor—Holy Living. Section IV, p. 80.

• Get thee glass eyes;
  And, like a scurvy politician, seem
  To see the things thou dost not.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act IV, scene 6, line 174.

• O, that estates, degrees, and offices
  Were not deriv’d corruptly, and that clear honour
  Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
  • William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act II, scene 9, line 41.

• Persuade me not; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.
  • William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I, scene 1, line 1.

• Who is the dark horse he has in his stable?
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, Adventures of Philip.

• The gratitude of place expectants is a lively sense of future favours.
  • Ascribed to Robert Walpole by Willaim Hazlitt, Wit and Humour. Same in La Rochefoucauld, Maxims.

• I am not a politician, and my other habits air good.
  • Artemus Ward, Fourth of July Oration.

• Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.
  • Woodrow Wilson, speech to the Pan-American Scientific Congress at Washington (January 6, 1916).

• There may be cases in which there is so much of difficulty in knowing where the law stands that we take time to consider, and sometimes doubt much and sometimes differ among ourselves. But I believe every one of the Judges acts upon the principle that he is before man and God in the discharge of his duty, and acts upon his solemn oath, and declares tbe law not according to any political fancy, or for the purposes of serving one party or serving another, but according to the pure conviction of his own mind without looking to any party.
  • Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet, Case of Edmonds and others (1821), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 899.

• I am in too high a situation to fear any man or class of men. I thank God I am in a position which puts me above politics.
  • Earl of Clonwell, Case of Glennan and others (1796), 26 How. St. Tr. 459.

• Political arguments, in the fullest sense of the word, as they concern the government of a nation, must be, and always have been, of great weight in the consideration of the Court.
  • Lord Hardwicke, The Earl of Chesterfield v. Janssen (1750), 1 Atk. 352; id. 2 Ves. Sen. 153.

• One cannot look too closely at and weigh in too golden scales the acts of men hot in their political excitement.
  • Hawkins, J., Ex parte Castioni (1890), 60 L. J. Rep. (N. S.) Mag. Cas. 33.

• It cannot but occur to every person’s observation, that as long as parties exist in the country (and perhaps it is for the good of the country that parties should exist to a certain degree, because they keep ministers on their guard in their conduct), they will have their friends and adherents. A great political character, who held a high situation in this country some years ago, but who is now dead, used to say that ministers were the better for being now and then a little peppered and salted. And while these parties exist, they will have their friendships and attainments, which will sometimes dispose them to wander from argument to declamation.
  • Lord Kenyon, Holt’s Case (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1234.

• The learned counsel has very properly avoided all political discussions unconnected with the subject, and I shall follow his example. Courts of justice have nothing to do with them.
  • Lord Kenyon, L.C.J., Trial of John Vint and others (1799), 27 How. St. Tr. 640.

• Men argue differently, from natural phenomena and political appearances: they have different capacities, different degrees of knowledge, and different intelligence. But the means of information and judging are open to both: each professes to act from his own skill and sagacity; and, therefore, neither needs to communicate to the other.
  • Lord Mansfield, Carter v. Boehm (1765), 3 Burr. 1905.

• The Constitution does not allow reasons of State to influence our judgments: God forbid it should! We must not regard political consequences, how formidable soever they might be: if rebellion was the certain consequence, we are bound to say, “Fiat justitia mat caelum.” The Constitution trusts the King with reasons of State and policy; he may stop prosecutions,1 he may pardon offences2; it is his, to judge whether the law or the criminal should yield. We have no election.
  • Lord Mansfield, Case of John Wilkes (1770), 19 How. St. Tr. 1112.

• Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
  • Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels, chapter 24, p. 373 (1973). Originally published in 1906.

• The only way you can do that [decrease taxes, balance the budget, and increase military spending] is with mirrors, and that’s what it would take.
  • John B. Anderson, remarks at GOP Presidential Forum, Des Moines, Iowa, January 5, 1980, as reported by the Des Moines Sunday Register, January 6, 1980, p. 4A.

• PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, p. 270 (1948). Originally published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book.

• Politics is not an exact science.

  (Die Politik ist keine exakte Wissenschaft.)

  • Otto von Bismarck, Prussian Chamber, December 18, 1863.—The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3d ed., p. 84 (1979).

• Politics is the art of the possible.

  (Die Politik ist die Lehre von Moglichen.)

  • Otto von Bismarck, conversation with Meyer von Waldeck, August 11, 1867.—The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3d ed., p. 84 (1979).

• All political power is primarily an illusion…. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.
  • Jimmy Breslin How the Good Guys Finally Won, Notes from an Impeachment Summer, p. 33–34 (1975). The phrase is usually quoted as “blue smoke and mirrors”.

• A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.
  • James Bryce; in Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship, p. 66 (1930). This remark was made during a conversation with Wister in London in 1921.

• Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.
  • Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790”, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 3, p. 246 (1899).

• Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, address recorded for the Republican Lincoln Day dinners, January 28, 1954. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954, p. 219.

• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
  • H. L. Mencken, “Women as Outlaws”, A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 29 (1949). This essay was first published in The Smart Set, December 1921.

• The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr. This statement is attributed to him in his obituary in The New York Times, June 2, 1971, p. 45. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honor, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.
  • Attributed to Plutarch in The Great Quotations, ed. George Seldes, p. 570 (1966). Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.
  • Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, remarks to Harvard and Yale undergraduates invited to Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island, June 1901.—Hermann Hagedorn, The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill, p. 112 (1954).

• Politics is the practical exercise of the art of self-government, and somebody must attend to it if we are to have self-government; somebody must study it, and learn the art, and exercise patience and sympathy and skill to bring the multitude of opinions and wishes of self-governing people into such order that some prevailing opinion may be expressed and peaceably accepted. Otherwise, confusion will result either in dictatorship or anarchy. The principal ground of reproach against any American citizen should be that he is not a politician. Everyone ought to be, as Lincoln was.
  • Elihu Root, “Lincoln as a Leader of Men”, Men and Policies, Addresses by Elihu Root, ed. Robert Bacon and James B. Scott, p. 75 (1924).

• Who put up that cage?
  Who hung it up with bars, doors?
  Why do those on the inside want to get out?
  Why do those outside want to get in?
  What is this crying inside and out all the time?
  What is this endless, useless beating of baffled wings at these bars, doors, this cage?
  • Carl Sandburg, “Money, Politics, Love and Glory”, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, rev. and expanded ed., p. 394 (1970).

• Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, “Yoshida-Torajiro”, Familiar Studies of Men and Books, p. 175 (1902).

• The political activity prevailing in the United States is something one could never understand unless one had seen it. No sooner do you set foot on American soil than you find yourself in a sort of tumult; a confused clamor rises on every side, and a thousand voices are heard at once, each expressing some social requirements. All around you everything is on the move: here the people of a district are assembled to discuss the possibility of building a church; there they are busy choosing a representative; further on, the delegates of a district are hurrying to town to consult about some local improvements; elsewhere it’s the village farmers who have left their furrows to discuss the plan for a road or a school.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, vol. 1, part 2, chapter 6, p. 242 (1969). Originally published in 1835–1840.

• There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, vol. 1, part 2, chapter 8, p. 270 (1969). Originally published in 1835–1840.

• Politics is a fascinating game, because politics is government. It is the art of government.
  • Harry S. Truman.—William Hillman, Mr. President: The First Publication from the Personal Diaries, Private Letters, Papers and Revealing Interviews of Harry S. Truman, p. 198 (1952).

• Politics makes strange bed-fellows.
  • Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 15th week, p. 131 (1871).

• Until you’ve been in politics
  you’ve never really been alive
  it’s rough and sometimes it’s
  dirty and it’s always hard
  work and tedious details
  But, it’s the only sport for grownups—all other
  games are for kids.
  —Heinlein
  • Author unknown. Framed saying on the mantel of Senator John C. Culver’s private office, 1978. Elizabeth Drew, “A Reporter at Large (Senator John C. Culver—part I)”, The New Yorker, September 11, 1978, p. 60. Disclaimed by Robert A. Heinlein, noted science-fiction author.