Quotes on Politics

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

It sure is hell to be president.

...without equality there can be no democracy.

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

Frankly, I don't mind not being President. I just mind that someone else is.

And as long as America must choose, that long will there be a need and a place for the Democratic Party. We Democrats can run on our record but we cannot rest on it. We will win if we continue to take the initiative and if we carry the message of hope and action throughout the country. Alexander Smith once said, 'A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.' Let us continue to plant, and our children shall reap the harvest. That is our destiny as Democrats.

If we were to promise people nothing better than only revolution, they would scratch their heads and say: 'Is it not better to have good goulash?'

If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.

I court not the votes of the fickle mob.

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.

A world united is better than a world divided, but a world divided is better than a world destroyed.

An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The DEMOCRATIC idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them

You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.

Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.