Politics Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Mao Zedong

George Steiner

Mary Cheney

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Emmeline Pankhurst

Hans Eysenck

G. M. Trevelyan

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Carl von Clausewitz

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas:

Every revolutionary idea — in science, politics, art, or whatever — seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
(1) "It's completely impossible — don't waste my time";
(2) "It's possible, but it's not worth doing";
(3) "I said it was a good idea all along."

Arthur C. Clarke

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

John Kenneth Galbraith

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.

Much advance publicity was made for the address the Master would deliver on The Destruction of the World and a large crowd gathered at the monastery grounds to hear him.
The address was over in less than a minute. All he said was:
"These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness."

Anthony de Mello

The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.

Emmeline Pankhurst

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

Theodore H. White

Alternative translation: In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Beauty is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.

Theodore H. White

If any of us hopes to survive, s/he must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.

I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts.

In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.

Joseph Chamberlain

People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled 'politics'.

Religion is organized to satisfy and guide the soul—politics does the same thing for the body.

The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews.

At the same time, I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left wing associations.
The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country. If [there is] any place in the world we need Christianity, it's in Washington. And that's why preachers long since need to get over that intimidation forced upon us by liberals, that if we mention anything about politics, we are degrading our ministry.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

James MacGregor Burns