Great Political Quotes

• Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

  John Podhoretz

  Winning, Giving, Political

  58 Copy quote

• Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.

  John Rawls

  Giving, Political, Doctrine

  Interview with Bernard G. Prusak, www.commonwealmagazine.org. September 25, 1998.

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• In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

  Voltaire

  Money, Art, Humor

  387 Copy quote

• History shows us that the people who end up changing the world - the great political, social, scientific, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries - are always nuts, until they are right, and then they are geniuses.

  John Eliot

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  John Eliot (2006). “Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More”, Portfolio (Hardcover)

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• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inspirational, Funny, Money

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.24, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

  Aesop

  Witty, Government, Political Will

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Political, Facts, Movement

  23 Copy quote
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  Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

  Groucho Marx

  Art, Freedom, Political Will

  231 Copy quote

• A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Everybody's Political What's What? ch. 30 (1944)

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• We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

  Winston Churchill

  Freedom, Humor, Men

  Winston S. Churchill “Young Statesman”

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• I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Sarcastic, Witty

  In Saturday Review 25 Aug. 1962

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• No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Trust, Freedom

  113 Copy quote

• Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

  Ronald Reagan

  Freedom, Military, Moving

  Remarks to state chairs of National White House Conference on Small Business, 15 Aug. 1986

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• Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

  Ronald Reagan

  Wall, Memorable, Europe

  Remarks at Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, Germany, 12 June 1987

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• Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Life, Sarcastic

  Quoted in Albert B. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)

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  Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!

  Pericles

  Inspirational, Trust, Witty

  "American Voters Suffer Learned Helplessness" by Andrea Chalupa, bigthink.com. September 7, 2012.

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• Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Inspirational, Humor, Government

  19 Copy quote

• The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

  Alex Carey

  Wisdom, Democracies Have, Australia Day

  Alex Carey, Andrew Lohrey (1997). “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty”, p.18, University of Illinois Press

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• The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Democracies Have, Australia Day

  Noam Chomsky (1997). “World Orders, Old and New”, p.89, Pluto Press

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• 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

  Talking, Should Have, Political

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• Ideologies - isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurence by deducing it from a single premise - are a very recent phenomenon ... Not before Hitler and Stalin were the great political potentialities of the ideologies discovered.

  Hannah Arendt

  Political, Isms, Satisfaction

  Hannah Arendt (1966). “The origins of totalitarianism”

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• The great political questions are in their final analysis great moral questions.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Political, Finals, Analysis

  William Jennings Bryan (1896). “The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896”

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• "War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

  Edmund Burke

  Peace, War, Military

  "A Vindication of Natural Society". Book by Edmund Burke, 1756.

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• We're in a political depression - a great political depression

  Chuck Todd

  Party, Reality, History

  4 Copy quote

• It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organisation that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravages of time and the accidents of history.

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

  Political, India, Spirituality

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1969). “Radhakrishnan Reader: An Anthology: Selections from the World-famous Philosopher-statesman's 40 and Odd Books Written Over a Period of 60 Years”

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