Quotes About Politics

Gradually, however, I was forced to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us.

As a result of our wrong thinking and supineness, we American citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose interests in governmental matters are often adverse to ours, who are thoroughly drilled, thoroughly organized, who make their livelihood out of politics, and who frequently make their livelihood out of bad politics.

A number of the heads of the offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade, themselves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, directly or indirectly, to break down the merit system and to pay their own political debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the positions under them. Occasionally these men acted with open and naked brutality. Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law.

I do not think partisanship should ever obscure the truth.

To bemoan the messiness of politics is not just a folly it betrays a dangerous impatience with basic realities. It is like becoming disturbed that people do not fall in love sensibly -- and so deciding to computerize the problem.

Politics in America is the binding secular religion.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

We've got a first class leader at the moment. David Cameron is dealing with the issues that he was left by the last government very well indeed.

For voters what matters is what government actually delivers for them.

Like Indiana Jones, I don't like snakes - though that might lead some to ask why I'm in politics.

A lot of men in politics suddenly woke up to the issue of women in politics when they realised: hey, there are votes in this!

I think for voters what matters is the values that drive the government.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us

The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Well, I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War, about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.

France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.