#Politics Quotes

“Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods,Nettled and stung with pismires[nettles], when I hearOf this vile politician, Bolingbroke.”

“For Brutus is an honourable man;So are they all, all honourable men.”

“Policy sits above conscience.”

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor.”

“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics andtrade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”

“A politician... one that would circumvent God.”

“Plato says that the punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak,--that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.”

“But also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is not only representative, but participant. Like can onlybe known by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of the thing.”

“Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.”

“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.”

“The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the power to make his talent trusted.”

“The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.”

“The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.”

“Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.”

“All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effiminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.”

“Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.”

“I heard a bustling rumor like a fray,And the wind blows it from the Capitol.”

“The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.”

“Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.”

“These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor; This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.”

“The less government we have the better.”

“The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.”

“Nobody wants to intervene in Russian affairs. Russia is a very large country, a very old country, a very disagreeable country inhabited by immense numbers of ignorant people largely possessed of lethal weapons and in a state of extreme disorder. Also Russia is a long way off.”

“I hate nobody except Hitler--and that is professional.”

“Nothing will bring American sympathy along with us so much as American blood shed in the field.”

“Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political status of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is ever a romance of history in all dynasties--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb.”

“There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.”

“And a pamphlet called Pick me up There is no genuine hatred against Herr Hitler.”

“An iron curtain has descended over Europe.”

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

“We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.”

“It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism.”

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

“Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.”

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind the line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe... All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

“We need to be strong in order to avoid war; and to win. A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation. Any person who is over 30 and is not a conservative, has no brains.”

“The acts we engage in for appeasment today, we will have to remedy at far greater cost and remorse tomorrow.”

“The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea.”

“The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.”

“In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.”

“Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party”

“The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.”

“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues & silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air & water would be taxed in India.”

“I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.”

“Socialism is an attack on the right to breathe freely. No socialist system can be established without a political police.”

“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.”

“[The politician] is asked to stand, he wants to sit, and he is expected to lie.”

“There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.”

“An empire is an immense egotism.”