On Politics...

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. ~Richard Armour


Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason. ~Author Unknown


All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. ~Albert Einstein


Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. ~Plato


Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. ~H.L. Mencken, 1956


Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. ~Nikita Khrushchev


George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the previous administration for his troubles. ~Author Unknown


Truth is not determined by majority vote. ~Doug Gwyn


An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. ~T.S. Eliot


Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. ~Ernest Benn


We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. ~Stewart Udall


Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~John Quinton


A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. ~Leo Rosten


The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. ~Adlai E. Stevenson


I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952


Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. ~Charles Krauthammer


Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. ~Doug Larson

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right? ~Robert Orben


Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you. ~Author Unknown


Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt. ~Woodrow Wilson


I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. ~Charles de Gaulle


Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork. ~Harold Lowman


He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech. ~Richard Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, explaining why President Bush wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands


Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom. ~Plato, The Republic


If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~Jay Leno


Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party. ~Winston Churchill


If God had been a Liberal there wouldn't have been Ten Commandments, there would have been Ten Suggestions. ~Malcolm Bradbury, After Dinner Game, 1982


History is gossip but scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. ~Oscar Wilde


The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face. ~Clare Boothe Luce


Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan


Politics, n: [Poly "many" + tics "blood-sucking parasites"] ~Larry Hardiman


If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ~Emma Goldman


How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America? ~Author Unknown


We have plenty of Confidence in this country, but we are a little short of good men to place our Confidence in. ~Will Rogers


American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age. ~Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964


Politics - I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together. ~Sean O'Casey


A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected. ~Carl Sandburg


One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin where it belongs. ~George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," Shooting an Elephant, 1950


Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men. ~Walter Lippmann


The qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him, once established, to use power wisely. ~Lyman Bryson


During a campaign the air is full of speeches - and vice versa. ~Author Unknown


Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. ~George Jean Nathan


Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least. ~Robert Byrne


Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. ~James Harvey Robinson, The Human Comedy, 1937


A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation. ~James Freeman Clarke, Sermon


Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. ~Winston Churchill


In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference. ~Dan Quayle


Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed. ~Mao Zedong

"Political advertisement paid for and approved by Wes Blackman for Commissioner – District #3"