Quotes on Politics

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.

There is no sea more dangerous than the ocean of practical politics none in which there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Anyone who thinks that the vice-president can take a position independent of the president of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Presidents are selected, not elected.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.

There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Understand that legal and illegal are political, and often arbitrary, categorizations; use and abuse are medical, or clinical, distinctions.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

Like it or not, women are always subject to criticism if they show too much feeling in public.

It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.