Quotes About Politics

Political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.

Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone talked to her as if he were addressing a public meeting. She preferred Disraeli, who talked to her like a human being. When you write copy, follow Disraeli's example.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." —Groucho Marx

American politics intervened and, in a sense, solved the evangelical identity problem—at grievous cost.

In the election of 2016, evangelical politics took a disastrous turn in its overwhelming support for Donald Trump—including 81 percent of the voters who identified as evangelical,

the identification of evangelical faith with conservative/Republican/Trumpist politics

My impression is that Australia is the nation whose dynamics in relation to evangelicalism—in terms of both religious life and worldly politics—most resemble those of the United States.

In Texas, thirty-six out of the 86 "winning" GOP statehouse candidates faced no general election opponent. In Tennessee, thirty-seven of the 75 winning GOP candidates "won" without opposition. Florida, thirty-four out of 85. Add it all up, and even with all that was at stake in these states in 2022, millions of Americans had no choice when it came to who represented them in their statehouse. For those millions, democracy at the legislative level was indeed canceled.

Truman makes friends without influencing people,' noted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 'Dewey influences people without making friends.

Every presidential nominee says his vice president will be given a serious, important role in his new administration. But it almost never materializes. A strong, totally self-centered politician like Tom Dewey sharing his hard-won power with a vice president? Don''t count on it.' - David Brinkley

Yet Barkley drew back. Perhaps he, like Harry Truman, knew that the quiet power of incumbency easily overcomes the noise of crowds and bands.

Never far removed from the progressive consciousness was a question that was never easily answered: of what value was it to punish offending Democrats, if one merely replaced them with infinitely more retrograde Republicans?

To Dewey, if brevity was the soul of wit, stagecraft was the very center of politics.

Woodrow Wilson intimate Edward House urged that his boss never first be approached by argument. Instead, the President could be made most receptive by laying a groundwork of 'common hatred".

Richard Nixon coveted, to the point of obsession, a controversy-free, stage-managed coronation.

The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. – Calvin Coolidge

As the pace of the campaign quickened, politics began to clash with Kennedy's innate sense of responsibility. – Arthur Schlesinger

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting.

Nixon was by nature a excluder. Halderman like to exclude people. When Nixon's need met Halderman's abilities, you had the most perfect formula for disaster. – Jim Shepley

Organizing a coup was not the same as wanting one.

At the bottom of all the political pontificating is a simple question: Will we be the city upon the hill or a nation of tribalistic assholes?

Do not tell someone you love them, and then vote for someone who will hurt them.

Most politicians have some con artist in them, but worse is the con artist who has some politician in him.

Americans have always thought they had a democracy form of government. We don't. We have a constitutional republic – a representative form of government.