Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.
SARAH PALIN, speech, Aug. 29, 2008
Never underestimate the ego of a politician.
DAN BROWN, Deception Point
There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money ... and I can't remember what the other one is.
When you start looking for some politician's footprints on the sands of time, steer for the mudholes first.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES, Poems and Paragraphs
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
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
A persistent theme in western thought has been the dream of a world without politics and without conflict. Is it possible to realize such a society, or is the political an irreplaceable aspect of what it is to be human? Many of the utopias which have infested the western imagination are indeed unpolitical places; all the tasks which were previously performed by politics are programmed by an invisible hand or by a supreme intelligence and require no further attention. But many of these utopias were invisioned as an outcome of politics, after which politics could be dispensed with.
ANDREW GAMBLE, Politics and Fate
Politics is the ruination of the country. Elect me for life, then they won't have to cater to any interest. If you elect one party to power, why the other party don't do any useful work for the next 4 years, only try to work some scheme to get back in. But if they were elected for life they wouldn't have to worry. The minute a man knows he can't get a political job, he may turn to something useful. A business that's doing well don't change people every 4 years. A man don't no more than get into the White House and learn where the Ice Box is than he has to get out again, then he is never any good for hard work again.
WILL ROGERS, Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Mar. 6, 1956
The statesman shears the sheep, the politician skins them.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Politics is a profession; a serious, complicated and, in its true sense, a noble one.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, letter to Leonard V. Finder, Jan. 22, 1948
The only way to reform a politician is to hang him.
ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims
When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.
GARRISON KEILLOR, We Are Still Married
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
Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
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