Politicians

A few of my favorite quotes about politicians. Gotta love 'em!

What I say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
– Abraham Lincoln

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.
– James Freeman Clarke

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
– George Bernard Shaw

Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
– H.L. Mencken

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
– Adlai Stevenson

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
– Robert Louis Stevenson

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
– Ambrose Bierce

Did you ever notice when someone you know is nominated for high office how you’re torn between local pride and fear for the country?

The politician is an acrobat. He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does.
– Maurice Barres

The Democrats may remember their lines, but how quickly they forget the lessons of the past. I have witnessed five major wars in my lifetime, and I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon. The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond? In the end, it all comes down to leadership, and that is what this country is looking for now.
– Ronald Reagan

Political bedfellows share not only the same bed, but the same bunk.

Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.
– Charles de Gaulle

Whenever the nation (USA) is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.
– Ann Coulter

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.
– Woodrow Wilson

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘guilty’.
– Theodore Roosevelt

Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
– Bob Edwards

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
– Groucho Marx

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
– Leo Rosten

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
– Robert Frost

I have never believed in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

There is no nation so poor that it cannot afford free speech, but there are few elites which will put up with the bother of it.
– Daniel P. Moynihan

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
– Milton Friedman

I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
– H. L. Mencken

Democrats raise taxes. It's their way of paying for programs that buy votes from people who don't pay high taxes.
– Pete Waldmeir

It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
– Samuel Adams

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
– Mark Twain

If liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
– Burt Prelusky

When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful . . . [But] when he spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.
– Milton Friedman

When politicians rush to fix things, it's a sure sign that either the intended patient is dead or fully healed.
– Tony Snow

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
– Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
– G. Gordon Liddy

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
– Douglas Casey

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
– P.J. O'Rourke

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
– Louis Brandeis

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
– P.J. O'Rourke

The best politics is right action.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
– Pericles

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
– Edward Langley

We’d all like to vote for the best man but he’s never a candidate.
– Kin Hummbard

Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people. Hollywood is a Washington for the simple-minded.
– Senator John McCain

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
– P.J. O'Rourke

When government officials talk about ‘creating jobs,’ they usually mean creating government jobs.
– Alan Reynolds

If pro is the opposite of con, then progress must be the opposite of Congress.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
– Plato

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
– Gore Vidal

Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never.
– Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

What you guys want, I'm for.
– Dan Quayle

It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That’s because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.
– John Hawkins

When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget.
– Henry Fountain Ashurst, U.S. Senator from Arizona

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
– Clarence Darrow

You can say ‘tough’ all you want and still be a wimp. Or a politician.
– Thomas Sowell

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
– P. J. O'Rourke

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
– Plato

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.
– Thomas Jefferson

You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.
– Aristophanes

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
– Alexis de Tocqueville

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Repub-licans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.
– Dave Barry

It is useless to hold a person to anything he says when he’s in love, drunk or running for office.
– Shirley McLaine

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.
– George Bernard Shaw

When one of our people gets elected, sooner or later he [or she] stops being one of our people.
– Stan Evans

A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him.
– Walter Williams

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
– Mark Twain

America is a nation without a distinct criminal class...with the possible exception of Congress.
– Mark Twain

The Founding Fathers did not foresee a permanent political class, out of touch with the people and in touch only with their careers and self-interests.
– Cal Thomas

Sometimes, a man must rise above principle.
– Senator Everett Dirkson

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
– John le Carre

[The Motto of the Democratic Party] We don't know where to stand or what we stand for, and in fact we're not good at standing for anything anyway, but at least we know we can't stand Republicans.
– Peggy Noonan

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
– Francis Bacon

There is nothing in life so pathetic as a former president.
– John Quincy Adams

The Democratic definition of bi-partisan is: “Do what we want.”
– Rich Galen

Western do-gooders may occasionally swing by some Third World basket-case and condescend to the natives, but for the most part the multiculti set have no wish to live anywhere but an advanced Western democracy. It’s a quintessential piece of leftie humbug. They may think globally, but they don’t act on it.
– Mark Steyn

Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.
– Thomas Sowell

In order to become the master, the politician poses as a servant.
– Charles DeGaulle

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
– Otto von Bismarck

In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive.
– Thomas Sowell

Scratch a liberal and you will uncover a bigot.
– Thomas Sowell

To anger a Conservative, tell him lies. To anger a Liberal, tell him the truth.
– Kent Brooksby

The height of statesmanship is to come home with a dam, even if you have nowhere to put it.
– Will Rogers

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a “clarification,” when people react adversely to what was plainly said.
– Thomas Sowell

Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.
– Walter Williams

During a campaign, the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
– Henry Adams

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of his last word.
– William F. Buckley

If this [the U.S. Senate] is the world’s greatest deliberative body, I’d hate to see the world’s worst.
– Senator Barry Goldwater

Beware politicians who peddle fables that cast themselves as the heroes.
– The Wall Street Journal

Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.
– Benjamin Franklin

In politics, power trumps knowledge.
– Thomas Sowell

Kent’s list of Qualifications for the Presidency:
1. No lawyers
2. No Ivy League University grads
3. No Senators
4. No one who believes in “taxing the rich”
5. No one whose paycheck has ever had the words “US Treasury” printed on it
6. No one who believes “the country needs my leadership”
7. In short – no one who wants the job