Famous Politics Quotes

"The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river"

Ross Perot, Businessman

"An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied"

Arnold H. Glasow, Businessman

"He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

"A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators"

P. J. O'Rourke, Journalist

"I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power"

Arthur C. Clarke, Writer

"A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful"

Charles W. Pickering, Judge

"Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote"

William E. Simon, Public Servant

"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, Writer

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself"

Mark Twain, Author

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence"

Mahatma Gandhi, Leader

"Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"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, President

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward"

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future"

John F. Kennedy, President

"There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer"

Gertrude Stein, Author

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end"

Margaret Thatcher, Leader

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything"

Joseph Stalin, Leader

"A fool and his money are soon elected"

Will Rogers, Actor

"If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers"

Nelson Mandela, Statesman

"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose"

George Will, Journalist

"I do have a political agenda. It's to have as few regulations as possible"

Dan Quayle, Vice President

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives"

John Stuart Mill, Philosopher

"Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against"

W. C. Fields, Comedian

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today"

Thomas Sowell, Economist

"A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"When governments become large, voters cannot exercise close oversight, otherwise known as political power"

Maggie Gallagher, Writer

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time"

E. B. White, Writer

"We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate"

Kin Hubbard, Journalist

"Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving"

Robertson Davies, Novelist

"The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office"

Herbert Hoover, President

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours"

Grover Cleveland, President

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least"

Robert Byrne, Celebrity

"The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does"

Bill Vaughan, Journalist

"When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale"

John W. Gardner, Educator

"If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve"

William Tecumseh Sherman, Soldier

"As you make your bed, so you must lie in it"

Daniel J. Boorstin, Historian

"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith"

John Foster Dulles, Diplomat

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