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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).

Random quote on Politics

Most quoted on politics:

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Adlai Stevenson II The Quotable Politician (2003)

Having served for nearly half a century in the House of Commons, I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.

Tony Benn

I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team.

Art Buchwald

Make politics an avocation, not a vocation.

Milton Friedman

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

John Dewey

Paternalism and centralism, the bane of capitalist as well as socialist politics, are for me the permanent enemy of democracy.

Michael Moorcock The Warlord of the Air (1971)

Do let us try to give a national, not a class tone to English politics .

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Longstreet, as far as Jackson was concerned, made a better politician than a soldier; he was full of the deviousness politics required.

Harry Turtledove Southern Victory (1997)

Your grand-father taught me the politics of pride, your grandmother taught me the politics of poverty. I am beholden to both for the fine synthesis.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Letter to his daughter (1978)

The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews.

Sandy Koufax

If you feel stuck in the middle of the extremes in our politics, you've got a home with me.

Amy Klobuchar

Our aid has humanitarian objectives only; it is never governed by politics or limited by the geography, race, color or religion of the beneficiary.

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum

Building weapons that we don’t need, don’t work, and aren’t necessary, and have no mission — that’s not bad politics, that’s robbery.

Paul Newman

This was not the time for rage but for politics and strategy.

China Miéville Looking for Jake (2005)

In a Britain increasingly dominated by extremists and ideologues, I want us to fill the huge gap in the centre of British politics.

Vince Cable

I was proud to have been the anti-establishment candidate after more than twenty years in politics, a small town guy fighting for the ordinary Canadian.

Jean Chrétien Straight From The Heart (1985)

Jean Chretien
To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

Jean Chrétien

That those in politics betrayed me is understandable; politics is made up of traitors.

Antonio Di Pietro

To solve these problems one needs as much an understanding of politics as an understanding of man - and the one cannot be derived from the other.

Kenneth Waltz Man, the State, and War (1959)

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.

Bernard Crick

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