Quotes About Politics

Roosevelt insisted that politics was not a proper occupation. As a citizen, one might intermittently engage in political activity but it would be a deadfall misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office. Such a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while in office and all of it puts him under the heavy astrain to barter his conviction for the stake of holding office.

It's a bully speech," encouraged Roosevelt in reply.

Nothing so extraordinary has ever happened in American politics," a dazed Harold Ickes wrote. "Here was a man—a Democrat until a couple of years ago—who, without any organization went into a Republican National Convention and ran away with the nomination for President . 

Mack turned to the real reason for dropping by—to sound out Franklin on the possibility of running for an Assembly seat from the district that included Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park, the village where Roosevelt had grown up and where his mother still lived.

Republican Robert La Follette of Wisconsin had defied the machine to become governor by waging "war on the railroads that ruled his state.

first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood "ready to renounce them." With this

As assistant secretary of the navy, working for seven years under Secretary Josephus Daniels, a former newspaper publisher with long experience in Democratic Party politics, Franklin had to learn for the first and last time in his political career how to operate as a subordinate. The situation proved challenging for the young man, who, despite his unfolding leadership skills, remained deficient in one essential quality—humility.

Yes, it's because it's one thing to think poor things and another to allow that African politics could have any resemblance at all to English politics—even such a long time ago.

Poor economies breed tyrannies.

Yet I think we may very well see countries that take it for granted they are democracies losing sight of democracy, for we are living in a time when the great over-simplifiers are very powerful.

Why haven't you been seeing me? A little bird told me that you were all mixed up with the local Reds, and that won't do you any good, Matty dear. Did you know the police go to their meetings? They'll put you in prison one of these days.

My lot were shocked and disturbed, for we thought, if you are not 'politically conscious', then you get what you deserve – Hitler, at least. That some of the most politically conscious generations in history had got Stalin was not a thought we could yet accommodate.

Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter — yet it's the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense.

Could we have seen this efflorescence of stupidity? Yes, because every mass political movement unleashes the worst in human behaviour and admires it. For a time at least.

But the fact is, again and again in my lifetime, the vicious vituperations, the polemics, the dialectics, the sophistries of politics have become vapour and mist, while what remains is the literature and the art, which at the time might have been merely tolerated by the politicos.

The thing is, people who are indeed frothing mad, if they are in political or religious contexts are not seen as mad. Yet if the same people were in a different context, it would be seen at once. But some people who are crazy drift towards political or religious movements where their craziness will not be seen, and whether they do this consciously or not surely doesn't matter.

There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.

Simple answers, reductionist politics, are the most prone to compromise, to saying we're addressing the essential issue and all that other stuff can slide. It is, in reality, people who slide.

Religion in recent years has become a political sport, and politicians are more skilful than honest men at extracting themselves from disasters.

Thomas, first Baron Wharton of Wharton, sat in his chair. "Boy," he said. "Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed...

Boy,' he said. 'Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed. There is a truce, and there will shortly be a peace between England and Scotland. Crawford of Lymond is the Queen's friend, and my friend, and your friend.

He couldn't succeed Richard now, certainly," said Janet. "But if the English took over? Criminals at the horn with the right kind of politics have died in silk sheets before now." "So they say. Perhaps it's lucky then," said Sybilla, "that this criminal has cheated his way out of favour with every party in Europe.

So I am a Socialist," said Ingleby, "but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn't happen." "If everybody had the same face," said Bredon, "there'd be no pretty women.

So she will, said the Dowager. You'll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I'm told, about pigs, and that's so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.