Political Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.

John Quincy Adams

Republican patience with how unionism deals with the political institutions, and with key issues like equality and human rights, will be tested because, obviously, there will be a battle a day on these matters. So lets face up to all of this with our eyes wide open.

Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

C. Wright Mills

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

C. Wright Mills

It not infrequently happens that persons without any other special qualification than the drama of their lives are precipitated into important political positions.

Charles Edward Merriam

Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God.

There is only one thing I wast to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.

William Howard Taft

Among other things Jonestown was an example of a definition well known to sociologists of religion: a cult is a religion with no political power.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.

Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,--a total perversion of opinion;society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.

If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.

The essential thing is the formation of the political will of the nation: that is the starting point for political action.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.

Henry David Thoreau

Most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives--professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

Henry David Thoreau

Already the liberal party throughout the world, express the apprehension that the one retrograde institution in America, is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw. This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it—to despise it? Is there no danger to liberty itself, in discarding the earliest practice, and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we cancel and tear to pieces even the white man's charter of freedom.

Abraham Lincoln

But the violence which we chose to adopt was not terrorism. We who formed Umkhonto were all members of the African National Congress, and had behind us the ANC tradition of non-violence and negotiation as a means of solving political disputes. We believe that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it, and not to one group, be it black or white. We did not want an interracial war, and tried to avoid it to the last minute. If the Court is in doubt about this, it will be seen that the whole history of our organization bears out what I have said, and what I will subsequently say, when I describe the tactics which Umkhonto decided to adopt.

We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I do not believe that the spiritual law works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects the economic, the social and the political fields.

Our political problem now is "Can we, as a nation, continue together permanentlyforever--half slave, and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me. May God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.

Abraham Lincoln