Politics Quotes

Rich people can be generous, even the ones with bloodcurdling political views can be generous, but most believe in generosity on their own terms, and underneath (not so deep, either), they’re always afraid someone is going to steal their presents and eat their birthday cake.

You, who are in power, have only the means that money produces; we, who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.[Vous autres, qui tenez le pouvoir, vous n’avez que les moyens que donne l’argent ; nous autres, qui l’attendons, nous avons ceux que donne le dévouement.]

You forget that political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay, knowledge itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood![Enfin vous oubliez que la liberté politique, la tranquillité d’une nation, la science même, sont des présents pour lesquels le destin prélève des impôts de sang! ]

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

To understand political power right, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

To those who have exhausted statecraft, nothing remains but the realm of pure thought.[À ceux qui ont épuisé la politique, il ne reste plus que la pensée pure.]

The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o’clock and the Conservatives at eight.[La única diferencia actual entre liberales y conservadores es que los liberales van a misa de cinco y los conservadores van a misa de ocho.]

The curse of a politician’s life: He has to bow to the country’s feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its own destruction.[Le corps politique, aussi bien que le corps de l’homme, commence à mourir dès sa naissance, et porte en lui-même les causes de sa destruction.]

Someone who doesn’t know the truth is just thick-headed. But someone who does know it and calls it a lie is a crook.[Wer die Wahrheit nicht weiß, der ist bloß ein Dummkopf. Aber wer sie weiß und sie eine Lüge nennt, der ist ein Verbrecher.]

Religion is a department of politics.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.