quotations about politics
The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech to Scottish Conservative Party Conference, May 12, 1979
Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish
Politics ... regarded as the study and pursuit of the true, enduring good of a community, as the application of great and unchangeable principles to public affairs, is a noble sphere of thought and action; but politics, in its common sense, or considered as the invention of temporary shifts, as the playing of a subtle game, as the tactics of party for gaining power and the spoils of office, and for elevating one set of men above another, is a paltry and debasing concern.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
All that I grasped was that to repeat what everybody else was thinking was, in politics, the mark not of an inferior but of a superior mind.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
A politician don't steal elections, he pays for 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Politics is at the heart of a representative republic. It is to democracy what the experimental method is to physics, what melody is to music, what the imagination is to poetry.
THOMAS E. CRONIN
"Giving up on politics is not an option", The Denver Post, April 30, 2016
I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.
TONY BLAIR
A Journey: My Political Life
To serve as prime minister while being too mindful of the approval rating is like serving as a prime minister on a roller coaster. What is important, I believe, is that I really act on promises that I make and leave results.
SHINZO ABE
Talk Asia, April 30, 2007
There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
HELEN DENDY BOSANQUET
The Family
The politics of the unpolitical--these are the politics of those who desire to be pure in heart: the politics of men without personal ambition; of those who have not desires wealth or an unequal share of worldly possessions; of those who have always striven, whatever their race or condition, for human values and not for national or sectional interests. For our Western world, Christ is the supreme example of this unselfish devotion to the good of humanity, and the Sermon on the Mount is the source of all the politics of the unpolitical.
HERBERT READ
"The Politics of the Unpolitical", To Hell with Culture
Under every stone lurks a politician.
ARISTOPHANES
Thesmophoriazusae
The politician is a biped; but he is probably an aberrant form of hyena.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
The surest way for those who want to rule is praising moderation, talking of peace and quiet.
SENECA
Oedipus
The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
I have always believed that politics is first and foremost about ideas; Without a powerful commitment to goals and values, governments are rudderless and ineffective, however large their majorities.
TONY BLAIR
The Third Way
Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Report to Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 7, 1918
Politics ... was at least half a question of proper stage management. And the higher the stakes, the more critical that management became.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought