Political quotes
7.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside political — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"If you can’t lead and you can’t deliver, then your own personal political philosophy is pretty much irrelevant, there have been far too many occasions over the last four years where the House has been ineffective."
"The shortest road to wealth lies in the contempt of wealth."
"Political elections are not life and death."
"I never really am concerned about the political landscape of the day when I'm writing because no matter what it is, it will change. By the time my stories come out, it will have changed. So I never think much about that."
"Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent."
"The world is now unipolar and contains only one superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower. In this context, given our common values and the political, economic and security interests that we share with the United States, there is now no more important foreign policy interest for Canada than maintaining the ability to exercise effective influence in Washington so as to advance unique Canadian policy objectives."
"As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown."
"As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference."
"I first bought a Buffy Sainte-Marie record when I was 12, and her music has always remained with me. In the 1960s, as a political activist, Buffy's lyrics were fearless, and I'm very grateful for all the risks that she took."
"I've never joined any political party and have no plans to do so. I'm fully independent."
"We need more Democrats in the Senate -Like Custer needed more arrows."
"There are simple answers to the nation's problems, but not easy ones."
"I don't want to do a TV series. It's no fun working from dawn to sunset every day. An occasional movie would be fine, and then I'll see what might develop on the political front."
"When it comes to pay raises, Congress always plays the role of Grinch. The bill extends an existing pay freeze for Vice President Joe Biden, specifically, and senior political appointees broadly."
"The political future for Democrats is daunting."
"Nicholas Sarkozy made the point that both America and France have political systems that they want to share with the world. There's an emphasis on being a unique person. Screw you if you don't like it. But the problem is, they're all the same."
"[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated."
"In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political."
"Neither political party is clean when it comes to tactics that divide our people."
"There have been two lines of progress in this world-political and religious. In the former the Greeks are everything, the modern political institutions being only the development of the Grecian; in the latter the Hindus are everything."
