Politics Quotes
The list of top contributors is odd: Benito Mussolini has the most entries, then Disraeli, with a Nigerian governor, Bernard Crick and Jean Chrétien behind them. It reflects what Wikiquote editors chose to collect, not a ranking of who said it best.
The better-sourced lines are drier. Edmund Burke, in 1770, dismissed the cant of “Not men, but measures.” Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s Unkempt Thoughts (1957) has the shortest joke on the page, “a Trojan horse race.” Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (1911) calls politics a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Three well-known lines are flagged misattributed: “Politics is the art of the possible” (Franklin), a remark about playing your cards face upwards (H. G. Wells), and “politics have no relation to morals” (Machiavelli).
That is simple my friend: because politics is more difficult than physics.
“Politics,” he spat. “Everyone is always looking for material to use against everybody else.”
It is not true that people of high principles are ill-suited for politics.
It defaces every type of mental activity — history, art, politics, science and social reform.
We are now, probably for the first time in our history, entering a new aspect of national politics.
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.
Nobody who really thinks about history can take politics altogether seriously.