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Quotes about politics

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Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward.
Jean Chrétienborn 1934My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Fourteen, Vive le Canada, p. 406
To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.
Jean Chrétienborn 1934My Years as Prime Minister (2007), “Entre Nous”, p. 2
- Power
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Winston Churchill1874–1965
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 Churchill1874–1965From a conversational exchange with Harold Begbie, as cited in Master Workers, Begbie, Methuen & Co. (1906), p. 177.
- War & Peace
Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is⁠—the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
Winston Churchill1874–1965The Unwritten Alliance: Speeches 1953-1959, London: Cassell (1961), p. 324, Woodford, Essex, (1959, 29 September)
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 Churchill1874–1965Early career (1897–1929)
- Economics
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech in the House of Commons (October 22, 1945) “Demobilisation”
- Economics
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
Winston Churchill1874–1965BBC broadcast (“The Russian Enigma”), London, October 1, 1939 (partial text, transcript of the “First Month of War” speech).
Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Remark on rejoining the Conservatives (1923 or 1924), reported in Kay Halle, Irrepressible Churchill (1966), pp. 52–53
- Comedy
I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
Winston Churchill1874–1965speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942
A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory … From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (5 March 1946)
- War & Peace
Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism.
Winston Churchill1874–1965The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm, Mariner Books (1985), pp. 13-14. First published in 1948.
- History
When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?
Cicero107–43 BCThe First Oration Against Catiline (63 BC)
- Anger
Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives.
Cicero107–43 BCThe First Oration Against Catiline (63 BC)
- Morality
“The people” are a rubber stamp for the crafty and sly.
Eldridge Cleaver1935–1998Soul on Ice (1968), “Domestic Law and International Order”