Politics Quotes

Quotes about politics, mainly in the U.S.

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters. — President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)

A liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet. — Frank Rizzo

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates. — President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)

A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for ten or fifteen years. — President Harry S Truman (D)

The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other. — Will Rogers

If you think too much about being reelected, it is very difficult to be worth reelecting. — President Woodrow Wilson (D)

The wisest thing to do with a fool is encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to air. — President Woodrow Wilson (D)

[President Bill Clinton (D)] has kept all of the promises he intended to keep. — George Stephanopolous

I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat! — Will Rogers

In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take. — Governor Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. — Sec. of State Henrey Kissinger (R)

Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation. . . . We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents an efficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril. — President John F. Kennedy (D)

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. — President Ronald Reagan (R)

It isn’t that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so. — President Ronald Reagan (R)

I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all. — President John Adams (Federalist)

Now anything the people demand that is right it is most clearly and most emphatically the duty of this Legislature to do; but we should never yield to what they demand if it is wrong. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. — Sir Winston Churchill

[President Theodore] Roosevelt’s [R] all right, but he’s got no more use for the Constitution than a tomcat has for a marriage license. — Representative Joe Cannon (R-IL 18th)

[My father] gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

Diplomacy is utterly useless when there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master of the soldier. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

We are not making a revolution, we are merely recognizing and giving shape to an evolution. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

[President William] McKinley [R] has his ear so close to the ground it’s always full of grasshoppers. — Representative Joe Cannon (R-IL 18th)

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune…. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood. — President Grover Cleveland (D)

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. — Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. — Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual…but rather he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. — Gov. Samuel Adams (Democratic-Republican-MA)

Every man of power by the very fact of that power, is capable of doing damage to his neighbors; but we cannot afford to discourage the development of such men merely because it is possible they may use their power for wrong ends. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

Here is the thing you must bear in mind: I do not represent public opinion; I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public, and the public’s opinion of these interests. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

The rhetoric about ‘progressive’ and ‘regressive’ hardly deserves comment. Those who tell truth by the clock or the calendar are practicing chronological snobbery. — Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics

All want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics. — Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used To Be Us

When you’re right, you don’t have to worry too much about stinging political defeats. All you have to do is sit back and let the winners enact their policies. If you’re really right, and they’re really wrong, their policies will fail. — Scott Bradford, Wilson, Obama, and the Fiscal Cliff

The great mass of ordinary commonplace men of dull imagination who simply vote under the party symbol and whom it is almost as difficult to stir by any appeal to the higher emotions and intelligence as it would be to stir so many cattle. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)

The way to treat an adversary like [Theodore] Roosevelt is to gaze at the stars over his head. — President Woodrow Wilson (D)

I had much rather be a real President for three years and a half than a figurehead for seven years and a half. — President Theodore Roosevelt (R)