Politics can be a touchy subject to discuss, but it’s something that we all have an opinion on. Whether you’re voting for the first time or you’ve been doing it for years, these 56 quotes about politics will give you a little more insight into what others are thinking.
Quotes About Politics
1. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. – John F. Kennedy
2. Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress but I repeat myself. – Mark Twain
3. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato
4. If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand. – Milton Friedman
5. It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. – Joseph Stalin
6. It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. – Mahatma Gandhi
7. The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. – John Kenneth Galbraith
8. I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end. – Margaret Thatcher
9. If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law. – Winston Churchill
10. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. – Winston Churchill
11. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken
12. Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. – Aristotle
13. Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business. – Winston Churchill
15. The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich. – P. J. O’Rourke
16. Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. – Mark Twain
17. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
18. If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. – Emma Goldman
19. If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. – Thomas Sowell
20. If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don’t ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers. – Nelson Mandela
21. Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. – John Quincy Adams
22. A fool and his money are soon elected. – Will Rogers
23. In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. – H. L. Mencken
24. I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office. – Thomas Jefferson
25. Politics have no relation to morals. – Niccolo Machiavelli
26. Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. – Alexander Hamilton
27. Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. – Newt Gingrich
28. If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. – Noam Chomsky
29. The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it. – P. J. O’Rourke
30. Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man. – Ronald Reagan
31. My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight. – John F. Kennedy
32. The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. – Dante Alighieri
33. Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated. – Will Rogers
34. Life without liberty is like a body without spirit. – Khalil Gibran
35. Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness. – Aristotle
36. I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. – Will Rogers
37. A free America… means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it. – Frank Lloyd Wright
38. Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless. – Milton Friedman
39. Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against. – W. C. Fields
40. A healthy democracy requires a decent society it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful. – Charles W. Pickering
41. I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. – Adlai E. Stevenson
42. A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader. – Harry S. Truman
43. Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. – Ambrose Bierce
44. There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer. – Gertrude Stein
45. Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families. – Mitt Romney
46. Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. – Ambrose Bierce
47. Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes. – Robert Kennedy
48. We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate. – Kin Hubbard
49. When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. – Edmund Burke
50. Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. – Henry A. Kissinger
51. A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future. – Leonard Bernstein
52. Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. – Gore Vidal
53. Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote. – William E. Simon
54. We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. – Aesop
55. I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies. – Napoleon Bonaparte
56. In politics the middle way is none at all. – John Adams
We hope you enjoyed this collection of quotes. Check out our picture quote of the day here.