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.— Rep. 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.— Rep. 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)
