[Recipe for political success:] If a politician during a campaign finds it necessary to resort to flattery, he should spread it on, not in thin layers, but with a trowel, or better yet, a shovel. Politicians should not forget that voters never grow weary of illusory promises. Politicians should ever remember that the electorate suspects and distrusts men of superb intellect, calmness, and serenity. And, finally, the politician must always tell people what they want to hear.
If this law passes I’m going to make you guys forget about Mike Duffy, because I’ve got more information and more proof on politicians in this country than you can shake a stick at, I promise.
Politicians hide themselves away They leave that role to the poor.
Wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars.
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
We learned that Tim Geithner, Barack Obama's top economics guy, vetoed any suggestion that the Irish Government might demand that bank bondholders pay some of their own gambling debts.Some weeks later, face to face with Obama, Enda Kenny chickened out of raising that matter. Face to face with Geithner, Michael Noonan also chickened out. We learned, in short, that Irish politicians are tough when they're taking money away from blind people.
He need only not have been a politician (the very name was a stumbling-block to a young lady's romance), and he would have been erected into a hero fit for a modern novel.
The politician—oh, Job! the devil should have made you prime minister—set the Tories to impeach your religion, the Whigs your patriotism—placed a couple of Sunday newspapers before you—he certainly would have succeeded in making you curse and swear too; and then posterity—it will just be a mooted point for future historians, whether you were the saviour, the betrayer, or the tyrant of your country, those being the three choice epitaphs kept for the especial use of patriots in power.
Senator [Stephen] Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, landoffices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.
And I am even sicker of politicians who wrap themselves in the bloody flag and try to rub off some of the stench of death from the bodies of those who have died, mostly in vain for worthless causes, in hopes that taking on some of the odor will cause them to be perceived as admirable patriots themselves.
The politicians pontificate and manoeuvre with eloquent manifestos and pronouncements saying little about the challenges we must confront.
There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.
If they acquire private land, houses, and money themselves, they will be household managers and farmers instead of guardians—hostile masters of the other citizens, instead of their allies. They will spend their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, much more afraid of internal than of external enemies.
So far as one can generalize, the most graciouis, cultivated, and innovative people in this country are French Canadians. Certainly they have given us the most exciting politicians of our time: Trudeau, Lévesque. Without them, Canada would be an exceedingly boring and greatly diminished place.
Every living creature will naturally attempt to discover and eliminate the cause of a catastrophe in which it finds itself involved. It will not repeat actions that brought about the catastrophe in the first place. This is how difficulties are surmounted by experience. Our politicians are far removed from such natural reactions. It would not be farfetched to say that it is in the nature of a politician that he does not learn anything from experience.
A shoemaker who loses himself in mystical ecstasy and begins to think of himself as a saviour of the people, sent by God, will inevitably cut the soles the wrong way and mess up his stitches. As time goes on, he will be faced with starvation. It is precisely by this process, on the other hand, that the politician becomes strong and rich.
The people should always control the politicians' decisions.
He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.
He gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
I'm proud that I'm a politician. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.
I'm not a politician and my other habits are good. I've no enemys to reward, nor friends to sponge. But I'm a Union man.
Man is by nature a political animal.
POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
[Trying to obtain information from Mr. Mitchell was] Like trying to nail a drop of water to the wall.
A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden.
"Don't teach my boy poetry", an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. "Don't teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament". Well, perhaps she was right—but if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place to live on this Commencement Day of 1956.
[Politicians] are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll double-cross that bridge when he comes to it".
You have to pursue the ideals of a Joan of Arc with the political prowess of an Adam Clayton Powell. Whatever you say about Joan, her purpose was noble. And whatever you say about Adam, his politics is effective; it gets things done he wants done.
I'd rather keep my promises to other politicians than to God. God, at least, has a degree of forgiveness.