“We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick... the trade union for the nation as a whole.”
“The only way you can do that [Balance The Budget, Decrease Taxes, and Increase Military Spending] is with mirrors, and that's what it would take.”
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and Hence Clamorous To Be Led To Safety] by an endless series of hobgoblins.”
“You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!”
“Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.”
“If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.”
“Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.”
“The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.”
“Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord's anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can't get your fingers on him.”
“Politician: From the Greek ''poly'' (''many'') and the French ''tOte'' (''head'' or ''face,'' as in ''tOte-a-tOte'': head to head or face to face). Hence”
“People with high ideals don't necessarily make good politicians. If clean politics is so important, we should leave the job to scientists and the clergy.”
“Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.”
“I find myself... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”
“The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.”
“As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.”
“A politician is a man who understands government and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years.”
“Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seaman), and our own Ronald Reagan.”
“Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.”
“What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.”
“A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.”
“The more you read and observe about this politics thing, the more you've got to admit that each party's worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.”
“The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.”
“What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.”
“Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it.”
“Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.”
“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working Americans. It is the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”
“Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.”
“Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen.”
“One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.”