Quotes about politicians

Barton Swaim - The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

Successful politicians are people who know how to make us think well of them without our realizing that that’s what they’re doing they know how to make us admire and trust them.

Dan C. Quayle -

I love California I practically grew up in Phoenix.

Mehmet Murat ildan -

For people have four shadows four politicians have twenty shadows or hundred or more! One person with many fake faces!

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Half of the people lie with their lips the other half with their tears

George Bernard Shaw - Major Barbara

He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais - The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze Di Figaro): Vocal Score

Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent to whip up the voters' worst passions while you seem to call on their highest instincts, and the sense to stay wrapped in the flag. That's politics: I'll take the simple life.

Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Politics bores you?" Bronsen said.Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations.

Vladimir Odoyevsky -

Nothing so removes a man from his inner, mysterious, real life, nothing makes him so deaf and dumb as the picture of these petty passions and petty crimes which calls itself the world of politics.

Roderick Vincent - The Cause

We are living in a world where moral climates have no atmosphere.

Faraaz Kazi -

Today many of these selfish politicians are preying on the nation itself – (belching corruption and farting discontent!)

Craig Ferguson -

I have a deep and profound mistrust of all politicians.

Oliver Kemper -

Money is a servant to politicians and the country.But, if the politicians and the country become the servant of the money, the politicians has failed.

Reza Aslan -

A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.

Bill Maher -

Last week, I suggested the candidates take up mushrooms. I’ll be damned if Rick Perry didn’t take me up on that.

Nick Taylor - The Disagreement

He was a consummate politician-- which is to say he was given to expedient speech and lacked even a vestigial spine.

Steven Magee -

If you do not want to be lied to, then you need to stop following politics.

Saminu Kanti -

I am not a member of any political party, APC or PDP. I am a Democrat.

John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany

IT (The country) IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING - FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT'S HIM, THAT'S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE'S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED "DICK." HE'S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT'S WRONG WITH TH

James Rozoff -

A politician is someone who knows everything about running a campaign and nothing about running a country.

Stewart Stafford -

The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.

H.G. Wells - The Holy Terror

It was his first definite encounter with the wary-eyed, platitudinous, evasive Labour leaders, and he realised at once the formidable barrier ofinert leadership they constituted, between the discontented masses and constructive change. They seemed to be almost entirely preoccupied byinternecine intrigues and the "discipline of the Party". They were steeped in Party professionalism. They were not in any way traitors to their cause, or wilfully reactionary, but they had no minds for a renascent wo

H.G. Wells - The Holy Terror

He came away with an exasperated sense of failure. He denounced parliamentary government root and branch that night. Parliament was doomed. The fact that it had not listened to Rud was only one little conclusive fact in a long indictment. "It has become a series of empty forms," he said. "All over the world, always, the sawdust of reality is running out of the shapes of quasi-public things. Not one British citizen in a thousand watches what is done in Parliament; not one in a thousand Americans

H.G. Wells - The Holy Terror

You English," said Steenhold."You Americans," said Rud."When you aren't as fresh as paint," he said, "you Americans are as stale as old cabbage leaves. I'm amazed at your Labour leaders, at the sort of things you can still take seriously as Presidential Candidates. These leonine reverberators tossing their manes back in order to keep their eyes on the White House -- they belong to the Pleistocene. We dropped that sort of head in England after John Bright. When the Revolution is over and I retire

H.G. Wells - The Holy Terror

It doesn't take ten years of study, you don't need to go to the University, to find out that this is a damned good world gone wrong. Gone wrong, because it is being monkeyed with by people too greedy and mean and wrong-hearted altogether to do the right thing by our common world. They've grabbed it and they won't let go. They might lose their importance; they might lose their pull. Everywhere it's the same. Beware of the men you make your masters. Beware of the men you trust.We've only got to be

Michael Bassey Johnson - Master of Maxims

Bad people often end up as heroes.

Mehmet Murat ildan -

One of the lowest creatures on earth is the politician who tries to eliminate his political rivals using unlawful methods and even violence! To halt the march of such demonic people, never use the same immoral methods, because to defeat a poisonous snake you don’t have to be a poisonous snake yourself!

F. S. Oliver -

Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentially, you will be well advised to stay out of politics altogether and set up as a prophet; your prophecies may perhaps sow good seed for some future harvest. But as a politician you would be impotent. For at any given time the bulk of your countrymen believe firmly and devoutly, not only in various thin

Nicholas Gane - Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization Versus Re-enchantment

... In view of the violence of political power responsibility must always prevail. The only possible synthesis between conviction and responsibility is thus one in which passion is subordinated to responsibility, so that political responsibility is the primary value to be pursued with passion, thereby engendering what H. H. Bruun terms a 'responsible ethic of conviction.' Weber states: 'To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion

Munia Khan -

Unfortunately in today’s world a liar seems to be more reliable than a truthful honest man.

Ray Palla - H: Infidels of Oil

I swear if Washington moved any slower, we could be at war and it would all be over before they could even lift their sluggish, naked, dead asses off of their comfortable heated-seat toilets. -Fitzhugh to Captain Jeeter

Jack Campbell -

That’s the difference between good military commanders and good politicians, John Geary. You’ve shown me that a good military commander spends the lives of their people reluctantly and with regret, but does spend them when necessary. The good politician does the same thing with principles. There aren’t any fine burials for sacrificed principles, though.

Henry Johnson Jr -

Politics doesn't align with emotions. An emotional politician is most likely to be a tyrannical leader.

Anthony T. Hincks -

Why is it so many politicians are wealthy?Is it because they make good investments?Or is it simply.Because they are good investments?

Alexander McCall Smith - The Revolving Door of Life

Sociopaths are attracted to politics because the see it as a sphere in which you can be ruthless and step all over people. That fact that some politicians can tell such awful lies is another example of sociopathy. Sociopaths lie—they see nothing wrong with it.

H.L. Mencken - A Mencken Chrestomathy

One cannot enter a State legislature or a prison for felons without becoming, in some measure, a dubious character.

Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner

Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.

Bamigboye Olurotimi -

The tragedy waiting for politicians in future is greater than the gain in politics if it is measured, politicians kill, steal and betray the voters, but at the end they go to early grave, lose their peace and become miserable for the rest of their life.

Anthony T. Hincks -

News Flash!All politicians arms are going to be lengthened so that they will be able to pat themselves on the back for doing a great job.

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

No country can police corruption in other countries when it itself is not free from corruption. You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands.

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

People need to remember that a man who is deceptive deceives by hiding that he is deceptive. He is not going to openly validate that he is deceiving you because his aim is to deceive you.

Earl Devere -

Would you not say that peace is the greatest desire of true soldiers? Do we not have the most to lose from war? And businesses, most of them except military and oil ones, most of them have a vested interest in peace and prosperity. You cannot sell a house to a war refugee living in a tent, can you? Really hard tto sell an iPhone to a shattered victim. Businesses and corporatoons run this country. So yuou have to approach them with logic. Emotional appeals to the hippies of this world will not ch

A.E. Samaan -

Politicians are interested in the health of the people like predators savor live prey.

Franklin D. Roosevelt -

Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them.Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hat

George Orwell - Animal Farm

I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. An

Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts

Liars are highly unlikely to admit their lies, never mind apologize for the hurt they’ve caused. Liars don’t genuinely apologize. Deceit has become their full-out lifestyle. They are centered on themselves with no thoughts of the consequences of their lies. In cowardly style, they tell more lies to try and cover their tracks. They are not good at admitting they actually have shortcomings.

James Freeman Clarke -

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation.

Billy Connolly -

The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”"Don't vote. It just encourages them....

Grant McLachlan -

I have never met a politician who has exceeded my low expectations of them.

Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater,” said [Sherlock] Holmes. “I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP’s, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament.

Harold Cruse -

In advanced societies it is not the race politicians or the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and the creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicia

Aayush Jain -

Those leaders who fail, lack the capability to resonate their idea & thoughts

Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince

... If instead of colonies you send troops, the cost is vastly greater, and the whole revenues of the country are spent in guarding it so that the gain becomes a loss, and much deeper offense is given since in shifting the quarters of your soldiers from place to place the whole country suffers hardship, which as all feel, all are made enemies and enemies who remaining, although vanquished, in their own homes, have power to hurt. In every way, therefore, this mode of defense is as disadvantageous

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

I never understood what it meant to be a Democrat or Republican. I'm fully American and agree on some issues presented by both - but not all of them. So why do I have to pick a side? Nobody can say they agree with every single issue proposed by any team unless they lack the ability to think for themselves. To me, both parties are the same. A method to distract and divide a nation from using common sense and logic. I would want a leader to represent every fraction of the country as one united SUM

Lailah Gifty Akita -

Neither mislead nor misguide.

Alexander McCall Smith - The Full Cupboard of Life

Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks.

Wilhelm Reich - Little Man!

You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than th

H.L. Mencken -

In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.

Vinko Vrbanic -

A good storyteller minces words to entertain or inspire the audience. The politicians and religious leaders do much the same, but for a different purpose - to turn otherwise normal people to nutcases.

Lailah Gifty Akita -

We must pray for our leaders, to rule in righteousness.

Lailah Gifty Akita -

Lead diligently.

Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

People always kill Caesar. Don't trust anyone.

Sarah Caudwell - The Sibyl in Her Grave

In order to deceive others, it is necessary also to deceive oneself. The actor playing Hamlet must indeed believe that he is the Prince of Denmark, though when he leaves the stage he will usually remember who he really is. On the other hand, when someone's entire life is based on pretense, they will seldom if ever return to reality. That is the secret of successful politicians, evangelists and confidence tricksters—they believe that they are telling the truth, even when they know that they have

Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

Power is okay, and stupidity is usually harmless. Power and stupidity together are dangerous".

Thomas Jefferson -

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.-Thomas Jefferson

Bangambiki Habyarimana - The Great Pearl of Wisdom

The powerful are like a compressor, they will grind into paste everything on their way

Bangambiki Habyarimana - The Great Pearl of Wisdom

What some politicians really mean when they saythis country: me, my party, my ethnic groupinternational justice is biased: they want to arrest meterrorists: oppositionillegal immigrants: refugeeselections: remaining in powerpeace: eliminating the oppositioninternational community: the rich countriesthe people: sympathisers of my party

Mehmet Murat ildan -

Wherever in the world a country is governed by spiritually ill, politically empty, ethically rotten and mentally stupid people, over there you can find nothing but chaos, tears and fire!

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Always judge a man by the coloring of his heart and only his heart. Truth can be found in his record of actions, not intentions.

Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Truth will never shine from a heart filled with corruption and lies.

Aristophanes - The Knights

You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.

Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince

Again, a Prince should show himself a patron of merit, and should honour those who excel in every art. He ought accordingly to encourage his subjects by enabling them to pursue their callings, whether mercantile, agricultural, or any other, in security, so that this man shall not be deterred from beautifying his possessions from the apprehension that they may be taken from him, or that other refrain from opening a trade through fear of taxes; and he should provide rewards for those who desire so

Bauvard - Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic

Political debate: when charlatans come together to discuss their principles.

Bertrand Russell - New Hopes for a Changing World

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

Harry Patch - the Oldest Surviving Veteran of the Trenches

Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.

Martha Gellhorn - The Face of War

On the night of New Year’s Day, I thought of a wonderful New Year’s resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it.

Saminu Kanti -

Politics is a serious business dealing with serious issues and it should be taken very seriously, and seriously intelligent people should pronounce on political matters.

Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism

It is of the essence of any party to gain its orientation not from truths but from illusions which usually correspond to the irrational mass structure. Scientific truths only interfered with the habit of the party politicians of avoiding difficulties with the aid of illusions.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah -

When you confidently defend fiction, think about reality also

Erik Pevernagie -

Many politicians are tantalizing storytellers, as they mix facts with fiction, grab our emotion and tell things, they want us to believe. Their factoids are unremittingly reiterated, take a life on their own and in the end become the very truth… until the bubble bursts.("What after bowling alone?" )

Christopher Hitchens - The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens

Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)

Paul Howsley - The Year of the Badgers

The job of the politician is to speak for all people; not just for parties with vested interests, or organisations with the biggest wallets. The first people a politician should protect are those that cannot protect themselves: Those weakest and most vulnerable among us. This is, to most of us, something that seems to be an obvious statement of fact, and that may be so, but it’s also a forgotten fact. Now, today, the opposite is true. It should shame us all. It shames me. The very fact that the

George Bernard Shaw - The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy withwhich we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live,including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshift

Stephen King - The Stand

Don't think I know you," Harold said, grinning, as they shook. He had a firm grip. Larry's hand was pumped up and down exactly three times and let go. It reminded Larry of the time he had shaken hands with George Bush back when the old bushwhacker had been running for President. It had been at a political rally, which he had attended on the advice of his mother, given many years ago. If you can't afford a movie, go to the zoo. If you can't afford the zoo, go see a politician.

Alex Sebastianutti -

You turn words, you deceive people.

Criss Jami - Killosophy

The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.

William J. Federer - 000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic

The COUNTRY is controlled by LAWS>LAWS are controlled by POLITICIANS>POLITICIANS are controlled by VOTERS>VOTERS are controlled by PUBLIC OPINION>PUBLIC OPINION is controlled by the MEDIA (News, Hollywood, Internet...) & EDUCATIONso. whoever controls MEDIA & EDUCATION, controls the COUNTRY.

Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts

Actively repeating a lie or denial does not make it true.

Cathy Burnham Martin - The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts

Extra-marital affairs become things of legend… and often the undoing of legends… and mere mortals.

Friedrich Nietzsche - The Will to Power

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems a

Henry Grady Weaver - The Mainspring of Human Progress

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on ea

Anthony Trollope - The Belton Estate

People seem to think that if a man is a Member of Parliament he may do what he pleases. ... Being in Parliament used to be something when I was young, but it won't make a make a gentleman now-a-days. It seems to me that none but brewers, and tallow-chandlers, and lawyers go into Parliament now.

H.L. Mencken -

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World Revisited

Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any par­ticular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a neg­ligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people; but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the peo­ple, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey.

Matt Taibbi - and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government’s seal of approval on that, they’ll take it. But if you can’t, well, they’ll take that too.

T. Rafael Cimino - Mid Ocean

Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins...

Neil Postman -

Watch a man--say, a politician--being interviewed on television, an you are observing a demonstration of what both he and his interrogators learned in school: all questions have answers, and it is a good thing to give an answer even if there is none to give, even if you don't understand the question, even if the question contains erroneous assumptions, even if you are ignorant of the facts required to answer. Have you ever heard a man being interviewed say, "I don't have the faintest idea," or "

Frederick Engels -

Nowhere do “politicians” form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America. There, each of the two major parties which alternatively succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions. It is well known h

Alexander McCall Smith - The Right Attitude to Rain

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful.

Amit Abraham -

Many people tell me that I should become a politician but I tell them no I want to do something good for the nation.

Related Quote Subjects