Words matter. These are the best Politicians Quotes from famous people such as George McGovern, Shan Sa, Steve Hanke, Finn Cole, Clayton M. Christensen, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.
Politicians are better liars than writers.
Let the market, not politicians, determine the flow of rice, oil and other commodities. Lower, more stable prices will ensue.
I always think that politicians are worse than the baddest gangsters.
Finding a ‘sacrificial lamb’ on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation’s economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.
I can’t give political advice to politicians.
All sensible politicians favor growth, just as we all favor sound public finances. Both can be achieved if we rationalize spending, invest available resources wisely, and clamp down on tax evasion.
God and the politicians willing, the United States can declare peace upon the world, and win it.
At least in the West, politicians, corporations and media moguls can no longer take for granted their power to control the public discourse – and have it go unchallenged.
I find politicians so desperately boring. I don’t trust them and don’t believe in them.
Ever since economists revealed how much universities contribute to economic growth, politicians have paid close attention to higher education.
When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.
If I say I am not a politician, it is because I did not go to school to do political science. But at the end of the day, I think we are all born politicians. It’s practical. All you gotta do is practice.
Whether politicians are dealing with complex policy problems or trying to communicate with the electorate, it makes sense to establish a clear, long term narrative underpinned by forward-looking policies to deliver on its vision.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear – and what they want to hear is what won’t happen.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too dependent on politicians trying to make us believe that we are safe only because of their actions.
About 3 million IVF babies have been born since Louise Brown’s birth in 1978. Bizarrely, when this life-giving treatment was first considered, it was massively controversial. A storm of vitriolic protest came from many religious leaders, journalists, politicians, regrettably even other scientists and doctors.
It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did.
In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn’t act tough. They didn’t talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys – it makes me laugh.
One thing I want to do is create something called Ring Around Congress. It would be a state deal and also a national thing, where the kids, as a field trip, will go and join hands around Congress and give the politicians report cards on how they’re voting on hunger issues.
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things they don’t understand, such as working for a living.
Politicians need to rethink their reflexive invocations of the Second Amendment and the idea that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge.
Not only generals can be politicians, and not only generals can be defense ministers.
In Illinois, where legislators are paid $45,000, plus as much as $10,000 for leadership work, about half are full-time politicians.
Revolution is glorified by intellectuals, apotheosized by poets, sanctified by visionaries, and bled white by politicians.
We immerse ourselves in escapist mass entertainment, such as ‘reality T.V.’ programs. We support fanatical politicians and preachers. Our politicians, in turn, support dictators and tyrants in other countries, all in the name of ‘security’ and ‘stability’. And we arm ourselves to the teeth, and pray to God to be saved.
In pre-movie days, the business of peddling lies about life was spotty and unorganized. It was carried on by the cheaper magazines, dime novels, the hinterland preachers and whooping politicians.
We all know that looks matter, and modern politicians have always assumed that their battles are decided on both substance and image.
I know that in the battle of ideas, Republican politicians are at a distinct disadvantage. Their fundamental philosophy – which I characterize as survival of the fittest, richest and whitest – is too callous for most Americans.
For a profession that holds dear both the ability to vivisect politicians in prose and the expectation that these carved-up subjects will not complain, the media is horribly thin-skinned and vengeance-seeking when on the receiving end of criticism.
I don’t want to associate myself with any specific group of politicians.
I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills.
Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.
Real Texans want their kids to have the best education possible, not the one politicians looking to brag about budget cuts have left us with.
It is hard to say why politicians are called servants, unless it is because a good one is hard to find.
Certainly, it seems true enough that there’s a good deal of irony in the world… I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there’s obviously a lot of deception.
When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants.
The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.
It’s time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn’t 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.
All it takes to become president is money and a certain kind of power. Being president is the first thing I can shoot for, not the highest. It may come to a point where people take rock and roll musicians more seriously than they take politicians. It may eventually turn out that musicians have more credibility.
Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class.
I don’t think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests.
It is important that politicians defend their ability to act without fear or favour, and it is in the public interest that they hold ministers and public servants to account.
Politicians who lack the vision to lead the community on big issues like public transport often hide their inaction by blaming other levels of government when anyone complains.
The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.
The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it’s much, much more diluted.
People are fed up with the career politicians who created this mess or failed to prevent it and neither was acceptable, and the only way we could change that was by sending a different type of person to Washington.
He’s suffering from Politicians’ Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it.
Politicians, in many cases – their moral code will be dictated by what can get them reelected, what they can get away with. When you’re out of office, I guess you’re freed from those checks and balances.
Billionaires and corporations buy and sell politicians, while citizens struggle to exercise their right to vote or hold their elected representatives to account.
I have good friends who are politicians on both sides.
We tend to think of politicians as time-servers and slackers. But on those committees they usually have an interest in the subject. And they’re quite clever. I’ve seen them pick people apart.
There are a lot of politicians who are just obstructionists.
We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.
Let’s give the conventions back to the politicians. If we think there’s any news, we can tack it on afterward as commentary. But the conventions should be their show, not ours.
I’m fascinated by politicians, because I suspect the huge majority of them go into it full of ideas and for the best possible reasons but end up being hijacked.
Well, I, you know, I think at PIMCO we always try and be open with the press and the public. I mean, isn’t that what voters want from their politicians? Mohamed El-Erian, our CEO, writes several op-eds a week.
After believing in promises made and never fulfilled by Labour, people have become increasingly disenchanted with the process assuming that all politicians will say anything to gain power, and then never follow through.
Politicians are very experienced – maybe too experienced – at using body language to signal power and competence. But what these politicians are much more likely to struggle with, or just neglect to do altogether, is communicate warmth and trustworthiness.
Scientists are not movie stars or politicians who will feel insulted if they are not showered with accolades. Scientists are not interested in accolades.
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people.
Whatever flaws or personal failings afflict them, it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of priests and politicians are honourable and honest – seeking to live out their beliefs and serve society.
I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens.
I have more fun hanging out with my friends who are musicians and rock stars. You know politicians by and large are pretty stiff, pretty rehearsed.
Am I a liberal or conservative? I’m neither. Like most Americans, I find politics very frustrating. Like most Americans, I’d like to hear from politicians the facts. That is what drives me.
Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face.
My tenure at ‘The Daily Show’ started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.
Politicians in this country have always been for sale. That is nothing new.
The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.
America gets the politicians they deserve. That’s it. And you keep struggling.
Fear is hugely contagious. Used skillfully by politicians looking to manipulate voters, it can become toxic and capable of infecting more than just a few.
Voters tell politicians what they want through the ballot box. Constantly second-guessing them by speculating whether the parties should gang up on each other misses the point.
I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there’s a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
I always think that politicians are worse than the baddest gangsters.
I’d put it this way: Canadians want politicians to work together on their behalf. So that’s what I’m committed to doing. I think it’s been the goal of every NDP leader. Because we had a profound belief that we could do a good job on behalf of Canadians… if we were given that opportunity.
Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale.
There’s this unspoken club where you say to each other: Oh God, if they only knew how ordinary I was, they wouldn’t be interested. That includes movie stars and politicians.
Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.
Politicians diminish themselves by sounding robotic.
Jay-Z is as politically correct as some of the politicians. He’s safe. There’s points when you’re acquiring financing, you make adjustments. He’s made those adjustments. It’s his choice. For me, it’s not a necessity.
Politicians are at a great distance from the academic world. Barack Obama was my colleague at Chicago – but could i ever talk to him now? Never.
Volunteering has been undervalued in Britain for a long time. Often it has been seen as a kind of cut-price, amateur version of work that would be better done by the state. When politicians speak about it, people hear in the background the sound of budgets being cut.
Politicians are masters of the art of deception.
My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.
Nowadays, people in the entertainment industry can have a louder voice than politicians, and I think it’s important that they use that voice to say something positive or to give a voice to somebody that’s had theirs taken away.
A politician’s goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.
The public think the politicians don’t know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
There were two mentalities, and both mentalities had to change. There was what I called the Afrikaner mind set of the Unionist politicians, which was holding all power in their own hands, and discriminating, and their objective was to protect their identity.
After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.
Many female politicians get intimidated by the aggressive behaviour of men. I don’t. Not because I am a courageous person or anything, but because I see international standards, and I see that they are worth fighting for.
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
For a lot of people, most of their exposure to politics and politicians involves events on the campaign trail, interviews on cable news, or seeing a viral tweet here or there. But day to day, there’s so much more than anyone sees.
I don’t trust politicians. I think that by the time they’ve made it, with the concessions they’ve had to make in that position, I don’t believe they still have the beliefs they had at the root.
Politicians don’t like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car’s gas gauge, and you get stranded.
We’re at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.
Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who’s facing ‘climate exposure’ – as it’s now called by money managers – cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.
I happen to think it’s the politics that makes you electable, but the reason for that is politicians sometimes talk about electability as if it’s just a matter of conning the public. Actually, it’s a matter of persuading the public, and in my experience, usually, the public gets it right.
I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop… We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We’re warriors. Soldiers.
I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.
When you become famous, you start getting invites to parties where there are famous athletes and famous rock stars, politicians, people who have tremendous power and affluence. It’s not in my DNA, but certainly I have been exposed to it.
How is it that, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, there are still some who would deny the dangers of climate change? Not surprisingly, the loudest voices are not scientific, and it is remarkable how many economists, lawyers, journalists and politicians set themselves up as experts on the science.
If you ever plan to run for office, if you’re a teenager, remember everything you do, every tweet, every Facebook posting, every picture you put on Instagram will be there forever for journalists and politicians – for your competition to dig up.
Advertising men and politicians are dangerous if they are separated. Together they are diabolical.
The locals are always going to want the traditions to stay alive. I just hope we can do something about them politicians.
Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are ‘chosen’, the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.
We get the politicians we deserve and the environment we deserve.
Politicians and the government have become too interested in short-term gains. Of course, if you look at the direct financial returns in the short term, human space flight is expensive. But they need to look longer term.
The older generation grew up on blow-dried anchors, plastic politicians, and an ocean of pretense. Realness seems unvarnished and unpolished to them.
Politicians are nauseating by definition… They can produce nothing, neither a loaf of bread nor a table nor a picture; and this inability to create value, this total inferiority, makes them jealous, vengeful, insolent and a menace to life and limb.
I cover media people the way they cover politicians.
I wish politicians would put the environment at the centre of every agenda.
If bitter party name-calling turns people off then smear politics just destroys all credibility in the aims of politicians, the role of political parties and the political process itself.
Attack politics costs us dearly in terms of insight into the candidates. In a presidential campaign, the focus is so tight that the politicians are afraid to say anything that hasn’t been scripted.
There’s something just so kind of smooth about politicians.
Several politicians and wives of politicians have been public about their experiences with depression or bipolar illness, including Lawton Chiles, Patrick Kennedy, Tipper Gore and Kitty Dukakis. Each made a tremendous difference by doing so.
If we wander around as politicians jumping at every shadow and desperately afraid of having our words taken out of context or attacks layered on in an unfair way, I think we’re actually doing a disrespect to Canadians, to people’s intelligence.
Politicians who wear little tennis socks with the balls at the back should not be taken seriously.
A lot of politicians, not surprisingly, hire consultants to help them with their nonverbals, presence, generally how they come across.
You often see politicians who try to put on a different persona; they think they should be more jolly or serious. Invariably, the persona they choose is worse than their own.
Our democracy depends on a free and independent press. When politicians call reporting they don’t like ‘fake news,’ they undermine trust in our civic organizations for their own political gain.
I fear some of our leaders today have lost the courage to stand up. What we have now are politicians. They won’t offer real plans, and only stand up when they want to blame someone else.
What passes for real debate in Washington often seems more like an echo chamber, with politicians talking at politicians.
Don’t fall in love with politicians, they’re all a disappointment. They can’t help it, they just are.
Solemnity in politicians is not only tiresome but may even mask those twin sins – self-righteousness and intolerance – for the opinions of others. If I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t live, especially in politics.
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
Politicians… talk in generalities and lies, and I think they’ve caused all our grief. They’re so awful, they’re really funny. I hate thinking this because my dad loved politics.
I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.
We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don’t control that. If politicians want a war we don’t control that. Acts of terrorism, we can’t control them.
Welcome to the decline of America where, in six short decades, we have gone from aspiring to judge a man by the content of his character to aspiring that every reporter look just like politicians they cover.
The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the ‘seagull syndrome’ – we fly in, scratch around and fly out.
Businesses – we protect our businesses with the guns, our banks, our money. We protect politicians with guns.
Politics is a game and a profession. It doesn’t really serve the people the politicians are supposed to serve.
Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.
A politician’s goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.
Thank you to the readers of the ‘Huffington Post’ for voting me the ‘Hottest Freshman’ of the 111th Congress. It’s about time politicians from Illinois were known for something other than bad haircuts or having the ability to walk on water.
Be honest. Be honest with yourself, be honest with, you know, your fellow politicians. This is a rare quality of politicians.
Americans are guaranteed the constitutional right to legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, and it’s past time for Republicans to stop using the issue as a political football. In fact, it’s past time for Republican politicians to stop interfering in women’s personal lives, period.
I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination – my imagination is always fertile. I’m either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do.
Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.
I’m not a career politician. I spent 30 years in business. I can tell you that people in California have had it with career politicians: they are done.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that’s less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
What politicians want to create is irreversible change because when you leave office someone changes it back again.
Scientists are always the ones who head into the ocean, but I want to take writers and politicians, people who can convey the beauty that is there and perhaps do something to take care of it.
Well, I don’t think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.
The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power.
This is the fundamental problem with the ruling class in Washington, D.C. – the party bosses, the K Street crowd, the lobbyists who control all these politicians. They will do anything to maintain their power. They will do anything. They will say anything.
Three groups spend other people’s money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.
When politicians say, ‘Oh, parents should supervise their kids’ Internet use,’ it drives me crazy.
What’s distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn’t care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn’t worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call ‘the problem of dirty hands.’
Our society constantly promotes role models for masculinity, from superheroes to politicians, where the concept of being a ‘man’ is based in their ability to be tough, dominant – and even violent when required.
I think there’s a disconnect between political leaders and young voters around a lot of things related to the private sector. For example, a lot of politicians continue to attack big banks. While I’m not a defender of big banks, my sense is younger voters have had generally pretty good experiences with banks.
We shouldn’t have politicians micromanaging this war because it is complex and unconventional.
Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep.
The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.
The markets want to force us to do certain things. That we won’t do. Politicians have to make sure that we’re unassailable, that we can make policy for the people.
The web of influence which News Corporation spun in Britain, which effectively bent politicians, police and many others in public life to its will, amounted to a shadow state.
Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.
Congress is unable to do the work of the American people because too many politicians believe that compromise means capitulation.
Politicians are trying to attract people to issues.
People aren’t as stupid as the politicians think. More and more of us are laughing off our ‘civic duty’ to vote, rejecting the role of compulsory constituent.
Faith in technocrats over politicians is not a trend from which Britain is exempt.
Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations – clubs, associations, political parties, unions – to which politicians were responsive.
The first step into justice begins with the politicians. You have to demand from yourself what you demand from people.
I’m not a politician. I don’t want to be a politician, because politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right.
We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we’ve never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we’d always fall short.
Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone.
I reiterate my proposal of creating life sentences for politicians who make deals with organized criminals. They deserve the maximum penalty because a politician that makes deals with criminals – I’ve said it, and I repeat it – is no longer a politician but just another ‘capo.’
I get the feeling a lot of politicians are there to help themselves financially, first and foremost. I don’t really need to do that, and I thought if I could do something for sport in Scotland, that would be really fulfilling.
I offer something very different from the lifelong career politicians who have worked their way up to run for higher office or those who can parachute in with checks for $5 million or $10 million, and that seems to be the definition of credible or legitimate. I’m rejecting that premise.
Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories, and politicians react randomly to every new crisis – leaving us bewildered and disorientated.
I’ve consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I’ve always said that I’ve been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.
The endorsement of respected conservative Republican officeholders and politicians is particularly important at this time as to destroy Reagan’s credibility as a loyal Republican.
It would not be a bad idea if bankers were to go and sit occasionally with politicians in their political surgeries, where they might get a sense of the injustice that some of the community feel about the banks.
Politicians talk about wage equality, but my father has made it a practice at his company throughout his entire career. He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this, too, right along side of him.
Politicians have such large egos that it usually takes them an inordinately long time to grasp when they’ve become a pathetic joke.
Politicians will talk strategy and tactics and policies and programs until they’re blue in the face, or you strangle them and they turn blue.
Politicians don’t really bring up religion in England.
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
Smoking calms me down. It’s enjoyable. I don’t want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.
Politicians are good at saying how Government must do more, but we must also think carefully about where Government should do less.
Politicians also have a love affair with the ‘small business exemption.’ Too much paperwork? Too heavy a burden? Not enough time? Just exempt small businesses from the rule. It sounds so pro-growth. Instead it’s an admission that the costs of a regulation just can’t be justified.
I think politicians know how to misrepresent data in order to support a political agenda. Politicians and the people that work for them – I should say – are expert at that.
I’ve had a lot of disappointments. I think my biggest disappointment is the failure of elected officials to make good on their promises in regards to the environment or anything else, really. I have very little faith in politicians.
Politicians use religion, and they get their troops riled up with religion.
One can say all they want about politicians, but politicians to other politicians, their word is almost always good.
I am not content to entrust our free-speech rights to the good graces and whims of Congress and hope that politicians don’t abuse their power.
Fairness has not been enhanced by the tax code, but lobbyists have been made rich, politicians have been re-elected, and the economy has been made to suffer.
Even today with the public’s growing interest in food and diet issues, politicians rarely include food as part of their political platforms.
If we can manage to break free, to open the system and embrace all choices for education, we will be the first to give politicians awards to hang on their office walls.
My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.
One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.
Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility, unless the attitudes of politicians and all who irresponsibly exploit our natural resources change significantly in the very near future and all collaborate and sacrifice for the good of the planet.
Politicians are good listeners. Because if they’re not, they aren’t politicians for very long.
Most politicians are not authentic.
I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw some conclusions from it.
My grandfather was a persuasive man who made friends with people at every level of influence. In order to fight against our tribe’s termination, he went to newspapers and politicians and urged them to advocate for our tribe in Washington. He also supported his family through the Depression as a truck farmer.
You can’t have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That’s a recipe for disaster. And I don’t mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.
Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.
People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
I can’t begin to count how many times I have warned politicians and candidates to worry as much about the good coverage as the bad, because the more air they put in your balloon, the bigger the target when they start shooting.
Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.
I think politicians are so far out of step with what people really want.
Unsurprisingly, the poll-takers don’t talk a lot in public about the ignorance of the electorate on political and public policy matters. And the politicians are not going to disclose the, let’s say, limited body of knowledge in their constituencies. You don’t get elected calling your voters airheads.
Enough to using Texas as a political laboratory for testing far-right ideas. Enough to using Texas as a workshop for fattening the wallets of their special interest friends and supporters. And enough of politicians listening only to each other, rather than real Texans.
The history of the Internet is not, as some people have tried to make it, a libertarian just-so story. It is a messy tale in which the government played a significant role. That role was, however, far more subtle than the plans of industrial policy gurus or techno-boosting politicians.
Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.
Public employee unions, in their defense, say politicians have unfairly made them into simplistic bogeymen, responsible for problems that have myriad causes. Not all government workers receive generous pensions, they note.
Where journalists have gotten themselves in trouble over the last few decades is that their skepticism often extends only to American officials, the U.S. military and Republican politicians.
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
I’m your average Joe guy. I don’t really care for politicians.
The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don’t have access to politicians, who don’t have easy access to official documents, who aren’t able to buttonhole people in power.
Most politicians keep close tabs on what’s happening back home and work assiduously to keep lines of communications open with the political players in their states or districts.
Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.
People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don’t vote. They often don’t elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they’re not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds.
When you start learning how to give when you’re young, when you get older it is second nature. Just like stealing. Start young and you keep on stealing forever. Ask my politicians.
When I was young, all the politicians looked like ancient Latin teachers or greengrocers. They were mumbly, stumbly men with their hair blowing in their eyes, walking into trees, opening the wrong door. They had no idea how to present themselves.
Most successful American politicians look well-fed on endorsements, campaign contributions and chicken dinners.
I’m in England so often I haven’t really left, but Americans aren’t at all like they’re misrepresented through their politicians.
Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.
I want to do something to change the mistrust towards politicians.
Justices are not politicians. They don’t run on a political platform, and senators should not ask them to do so.
In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.
When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.
Politicians often reveal most about themselves in unguarded moments.
Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries.
Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
The reality is that politicians, in terms of the amount of power they wield and the amount that they work, don’t actually make that much money.
Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions, and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue.
There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision.
Present law has a process to ascertain whether or not a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, and it should not matter what politicians think.
The politicians are all useless individuals. Nobody is reducing the problems in the U.S. or Europe, just putting on a Band-Aid and postponing the problems endlessly.
The disaster in the Gulf was no accident. It was the result of years of oil money buying off politicians to lead to an unregulated and ill focused addiction to oil and drilling. The doomed fate of the local fisherman and the environment were foretold in the infamous chants of ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’
The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they’re extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.
Politicians are just Daily Mail journalists writ large, aren’t they? They’re always telling us what’s going to happen, and we know they don’t know!
Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.
Tax dollars are not politicians’ personal wallets, and they should stop treating them as such.
Mother is the first word that occurs to politicians and columnists and popes when they raise the question, ‘Why isn’t life turning out the way we want it?’
The passage of time is likely to make high-speed rail more and more desirable, making it critical that politicians of today think ahead to tomorrow.
My election only proves that the citizens are tired of the experienced politicians who over the past 28 years created a country of opportunities – opportunities to steal, bribe and loot.
In any country, in any city, there will be political influence on what is said, what kind of images are to be projected and, yes, of course artists can be and are influenced by politicians.
Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security.
As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.
Politicians in Washington and Madison aren’t hearing, aren’t listening to their constituents and prioritizing getting people back to work and growing our economy.
Well, if you’re looking for me to lead a normal representative life, well good luck finding a foreign secretary who’d be like that – totally dependant on the political system and has never earned any money. Then you’ll get the politicians you deserve.
There are, believe it or not, good politicians.
The recent history of Ukraine is replete with dead journalists, beaten journalists, news agencies being shut down, and politicians being injured or killed. Most are killed in mysterious auto accidents.
I’m not really into the political game as far as paying politicians and stuff like that, I’m not into that. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.
The experience of opposing mass movements was acquired by the KGB during perestroika. It was then that the politicians decided to develop and nourish mass movements for their purposes.
Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.
Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don’t know what’s going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that’s not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA.
Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins.
When in doubt, wear a suit. Look at male politicians: you see them in a suit, and they look fine. But if you see a picture of them on the weekend or on vacation, there’s a good chance they look terrible and unstylish.
We’ve got to trust the politicians with these decisions.
U.S. politicians are increasingly recognizing the relevance of the Hispanic vote in U.S. politics.
Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn’t believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.
I think that if we don’t get these politicians to come together we face the most predictable economic crisis in history.
Almost all politicians are able to have a great one-on-one meeting. But I’m not interested in the candidate who can have a great meeting. I’m interested in the person who can make the right decisions.
Professional politicians will say anything, and they’re always careful to leave themselves room to turn around and do the other.
Acting is not the noblest profession in the world, but there are things lower than acting. Not many, mind you – but politicians give you something to look down on from time to time.
It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.
Politicians really worry about being politically correct.
It’s very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.
Politicians and bureaucrats must learn to stay away from the day-by-day functioning of business.
I’ve found that in places where women have not really been afforded full rights yet – for instance, in the Middle East – even very conservative politicians in the region will say, ‘You know, my daughter would really like to meet you,’ or, ‘Would you send a note to my granddaughter?’
What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.
There are too many politicians in the world and too few statesmen.
Any debate among politicians about monetary policy is counterproductive.
I think a lot of politicians, rightfully so, understand that their political futures are tied to how many times people see their names in print. The press is so accustomed to politicians wanting those things, it’s a surprise when somebody’s like, ‘Whatever, I’m not really worried about those things.’
A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.
Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians very much wanted to push in the United States without success but in Iraq they do it.
I think people are tired of politicians trying to poke each other in the eye.
From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at – you know, and the soapbox routine. They’re much more uneasy knowing they’re a target of ridicule.
I don’t have business with any politicians.
Unlike the general public, I rather like most politicians.
When politicians began to see that every last thing that they did in public could be broadcast to a mass audience, the fact that the stakes were so much higher now that every moment became fraught caused them to become more cautious, and the consultants very gradually but inevitably became literal reactionaries.
The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.
I would like to be a part of a community of women, and help women be empowered, but I think I’m not necessarily political. I say that because I really hate politicians, so I don’t fancy sitting around and thinking about them all the time.
Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It’s how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.
And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians.
You can’t trust politicians. It doesn’t matter who makes a political speech. It’s all lies – and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.
I love this country, I love these people, though I can’t say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold.
We’re not in the business of putting up barriers; that’s the job of politicians. They’re the idiots who want to build walls between people.
Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.
If you interviewed 1,000 politicians and asked about whether the media’s too soft or too hard, about 999 would say too hard.
There’s no pleasing the British, or winning their favor. They simply hate politicians. All politicians. Hatred goes with politicians like mint sauce with lamb. It’s as old as Parliaments.
History shows that there is no more potent engine for reform than the passion of voters who feel betrayed by the politicians they hoped would do the right thing.
The symbolic significance of individual athletes’ achievements has sometimes proved more productive than the negotiations of diplomats or politicians.
Some politicians that I’ve seen have been brilliant with the public. They almost speak with the skill of an actor.
Public service is a part of who I am, having grown up in a family of politicians.
I get amazed, I can’t look at it but about 10 seconds, at these politicians dancing around this, dancing around this, I’m trying to find a correct name for it, this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men.
Cats and dogs believe politicians are like cemetery caregivers; they are on top of everyone, but nobody listens.
Social media has emboldened an army of online Islamophobes; in the real world, mosques have been firebombed and politicians line up to condemn Muslim terrorism/clothing/meat/seating arrangements.
Above all else stands the burning question of bipartisanship. Whatever else the politicians might say they’re about, our news analysts know that this is the true object of the nation’s desire, the topic to which those slippery presidential spokesmen need always to be dragged back.
I wake up most days with a vague feeling of doom – ‘Dear God. Here I am again.’ Then, when I read about politicians in the newspaper, the vengefulness starts. By mid-morning, the anxiety is kicking in.
The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them in the first place.
If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
I think Canadians are tired of politicians that are spun and scripted within an inch of their life, people who are too afraid of what a focus group might say about one comment or a political opponent might try to twist out of context, to actually say much of anything at all.
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
I don’t think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that’s where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
You know I don’t really have faith in politicians – this is quite a sleazy business. But there is no law which says that all politicians will turn out to be scumbags.
People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests.
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
I’m always amazed how many politicians have a very unlikely story, and when I talk to groups of students, I remind them that not everybody who gets into politics is a lawyer or went to school to study it. We all come to it for different reasons.
We do ourselves as politicians no favours if we are seen to peddle unachievable moonshine.
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.
Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged.
People are not really interested in what politicians talk about, but what they are really interested in is how their hard-earned tax money is spent.
I believe in professionalism, less in politicians.
You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that’s healthy and indeed even creative. But it’s where – it’s really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.
I’ve not seen in my lifetime any politician who is a heroic figure. The manipulation that all politicians use on one level or another is so transparent.
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.
Politicians are fond of criticizing others.
Politicians wishing to set a better tone should have the discipline to avoid televised cage matches.
I’ve never been disappointed by politicians. I’ve never invested that much in them in the first place.
It takes a very strong brain to resist the absolutes, the myths that the media and the politicians peddle – the idea that if you are too kind, where does it all end? That not to help someone is somehow a good idea.
We’re in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don’t believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
Conservatives complain that the Supreme Court is too liberal. Liberals complain that it’s too conservative. Both charges are inaccurate: in reality the Court is a careful political actor that arguably represents the center of gravity of American politics better than most politicians do.
Too many talented and supremely calculating politicians, including Nixon and Clinton, have destroyed their careers, or come close, by acting in ways that were obviously against their own interests.
We have to judge politicians by their cumulative score. In one innings they make a great catch, in another they drop the ball. In one they score a home run, in another they strike out. But it is their cumulative batting average that we are interested in.
I want to point out, there are a lot of politicians who enjoy the political end of politics, but they’re not interested in governance. And then, there are some that are really interested in governance and are just terrible at politics.
Most politicians – those people who live, eat and breathe politics – like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn’t do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.
As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.
I loved politics and, I confess, I enjoyed politicians immensely.
The Supreme Court needs jurists, not politicians.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear – and what they want to hear is what won’t happen.
Political ignorance helps explain Americans’ perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say they aren’t like politicians at all, and our category of politicians stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.
There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn’t in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.
We used to fight for democracy. Democracy used to matter. We now treat it with contempt. We have turned our backs on values that we built up over hundreds of years, for the benefit of politicians in Europe. To me, that is heartbreaking.
Some people bare their entire life on the Internet. There are politicians and actors, who like that. But there are some who don’t want to do that.
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Of course, politicians always say they’re just describing their opponents’ positions, even if they are in fact offering absurd caricatures, if not outright lies.
We want to get people of color out to vote, because their vote matters. Every politician tries to capture it. But it’s More Than a Vote because we want to come up with what’s our ask, and hold these politicians’ feet to the fire to make real change.
It’s always fun to put fake celebrities in unlikely situations, but somehow it’s even more fun when politicians are involved.
The church’s teaching on marriage is unequivocal, it is uniquely, the union of a man and a woman and it is wrong that governments, politicians or parliaments should seek to alter or destroy that reality.
For too many years, politicians in Washington have been eager to pledge more hard-earned taxpayer dollars to help deal with the student debt load. But this doesn’t sit right with the many Americans who take pride in making fiscally responsible choices and paying off their loans on time.
Maybe its time for politicians to fight back a little bit in terms of this notion that politicians are all in it for themselves, we’re all the same, we’re not driven by sincere motives. Because the fact of the matter is the vast majority are.
I don’t think people maybe think that the government does tell them the truth. I think they expect politicians who are going to tell them one thing and then when they get in office do something else.
I think Barack Obama is one of the most exciting politicians to come along in a long time.
I believe politicians should always remain realistic.
Politics will take care of itself. I’m interested in people who are involved in the situations that politicians create. Politics is taken care of by politicians – they’re not filmmakers.
I think politicians do great things in the world, but I don’t think they’re the only ones who can. I don’t like all the rhetoric and the finger pointing.
I’m not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics.
I believe Mexico should dedicate 100% of its oil revenues to developing human capital and technological development. None of us politicians should be able to touch that money.
The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, ‘Let’s put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,’ and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections.
Politicians like to talk about incentives – for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local.
I look forward to the day when there are more women politicians accepted in their own right and not as ‘women politicians.’
I think the American people, with some justification, think that most politicians live in la-la land.
Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.
Most successful politicians don’t let the job swamp their lives.
Politicians are probably the most underrated people in our society.
The bureaucracy always goes with the way politicians go.
I think that all politicians who aspire to the presidency are a little nuts, but for different reasons. What kind of person aspires to be the most powerful person in the world? The answer is someone with an internal drive that is so dynamic and so determined.
It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is ‘a religion of peace,’ as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything.
Politicians are masters of the art of deception.
Pakistanis can’t trust. They’ve seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they’re misguided by people in the name of Islam. They’re told: ‘Malala is not a Muslim, she’s not in purdah, she’s working for America.’
Jim Sheridan, the MP who wants to ban sketchwriters from the Commons for being rude about politicians, is a blithering idiot. Sorry, scrub that – clearly a very thoughtful person with whom I might conceivably disagree on some marginal issues. A blithering savant, perhaps.
I grew up in Ireland, so I do not have a lot of respect for most politicians.
Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.
Americans are guaranteed the constitutional right to legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, and it’s past time for Republicans to stop using the issue as a political football. In fact, it’s past time for Republican politicians to stop interfering in women’s personal lives, period.
When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are – usurpers and petty tyrants.
Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.
A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.
I never wanted to be aligned to a mature group because they go off and become politicians and stuff.
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.
Most politicians come into politics because they want to make a difference; we just have different ideas how to do it.
We could solve all our problems if only we were the efficient, rational human beings of standard economic theory and had politicians willing to think in the long-term interest of their people rather than their own.
In the ’60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?
Humor is a powerful tool, and some of these politicians are so far out and easy to lampoon. They just provide such delicious opportunity.
You know, there’s a difference between politicians and leaders. Politicians read poll numbers and compromise. Leaders do what’s morally right.
It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.
If I want to make political decisions, I should stand for election. If I want to do something in the legal field, that’s different; that is my – they are my qualifications, but you know, the politicians are the ones who stand up there and are answerable to the people.
Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.
When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants.
Sometimes I wonder whether Washington’s liberal politicians truly understand the greatness that is America.
I’ve often heard the complaint from both Democrat and Republican voters alike that they hate the fact that politicians get into office and they – and they’re fearful, they’re fearful to make tough decisions because they think more about the next election than they do about the next-generation.
It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man’s interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.
I’ve developed a much greater respect for our politicians and every high-tech CEO. It’s very easy to read about the things they did that you, of course, would have avoided in hindsight.
There’s so many politicians who have given politics a pretty poor name… their actions have been demonstrated to be part of their over-enthusiasm to get reelected.
When people say all politicians are the same, ask yourself if Obama was the same as Bush, if Francois Hollande is the same as Sarkozy. They are not. They are human beings with different views and different visions for the world.
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
‘The Week’ is my favourite magazine. Everyone from presidents to CEOs of companies love it, politicians, people in the massive charity business in America, in the arts and even more especially in the media.
I worry that some politicians still think we are living in the 1950s where the man is the main breadwinner and the woman works for pin money. Actually, most families where there are two parents depend on two incomes to get by.
You can’t trust politicians. It doesn’t matter who makes a political speech. It’s all lies – and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.
If you live in London, where politicians and media commentators spend most of their time, you are spoilt for transport choices – trains, an extensive underground network and a regular bus service.
I’m sick and tired of politics and politicians as usual.
I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.
It’s not just politicians. Any spokesman for a vested interest is well schooled in how to say what it is they wish to say, which may bear no relation at all to what you’ve asked them.
Global poverty is the product of reversible policy failures overseen by politicians, past and present. The poorest of the poor don’t vote in American or European elections. They don’t make donations to political parties or hire lobbyists in D.C., London or Canberra.
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
You can’t exactly bake a man to your specifications. Most of all, one shouldn’t alienate a candidate. A hybrid of Einstein, Tarzan and Inge Meysel doesn’t exist. Besides, the images of politicians in the media aren’t always accurate. I’ve had my share of experiences in that regard.
As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia’s cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.
Women politicians take their job seriously and accomplish their duties diligently and sensitively. Only they can understand the problems of women and act as a sounding board for their concerns.
There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don’t. I’m in the second category, that’s all.
When it comes to getting more women into parliament, politicians have at least started to take active measures. The British Labour Party introduced all-female shortlists in 1997.
I would say keep supporting space flight, keep telling the public and the politicians why it’s important to advance science and explore the galaxy. I encourage the Japanese to keep doing what they’re doing.
I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‘Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?’
Many of the racial problems in America are caused by the fact that people are innately tribal, and politicians know how to exploit that biological fact.
Right now we’re in the middle of a cultural war between the Muslims and the Western world. The politicians get in the way, but if you put two people together in a room, they can talk it out and work it out, just like Anna and the King.
I do think if all politicians were women, the world would be a better place.
I like lots of career politicians; I’m not against all career politicians.
I did not come to Augusta to provide lip service. I came to work for the Maine people. I also came to Augusta to root out crooked politicians and government corruption.
Philosophically, I am very different from normal politicians, and normal consultants found that very hard to deal with.
What links Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Andrej Babis, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Marine Le Pen is one simple character trait: hypocrisy. These politicians aren’t tribunes of the people, they are hucksters. They aren’t bitter enemies of the Western system; they are con artists who seek to profit from it.
We animals live life in all its glorious uncertainty. Why do politicians think they can control events?
Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.
Interviewing politicians and movie stars, you know what you’ll get. I like the people-stories better.
I have… been disturbed by the negative tone of the debate over immigration… there is a rising crescendo of opinion from columnists and politicians saying we should reduce our immigration intake.
Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.
Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi – a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune.
We have too many politicians who are poll-driven to excess. Polls are important. You’ve got to know what the public is thinking, but you can’t let them drive you completely.
The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.
Life is challenging enough without politicians to confuse us.
Our politicians are stupid. And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because they don’t want to pay for them. They don’t want to take care of them. Why should they when the stupid leaders of the United States will do it for them?
In the ’60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?
Politicians have limited power. They can’t impose morality on themselves. How can they impose it on the country?
I admire personalities. Some politicians who are only great mice are just persons.
In the restaurant business, you never want to have enemies, whereas it seems that many politicians judge their success by how high their enemies are and whether they can show that they can hold their ground and give a punch for every punch they take.
I will say this: in a state of emergency operations decisions are taken by the commissioner. It’s not for politicians to interfere.
Politicians are not lovers.
I think the American people, with some justification, think that most politicians live in la-la land.
The prison industrial complex, to put it in its crassest term, is a system of industrial mass incarceration. So there’s what you call bureaucratic thrust behind it. It’s hard to shut off because politicians rely upon the steady flow of jobs to their district that the prison system and its related industries promise.
Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies.
This is not the beginning of American civilization where we need guns because it’s the Wild, Wild West… There should not be guns in our society, and we all know that; politicians know that.
Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it.
When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy’s hand.
I had the belief that many troubles you could observe on the European continent were due to politicians not understanding economic phenomena. Even if they had good intentions, they didn’t have the skills to solve problems.
We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.
The Tea Party doesn’t like politicians.
I don’t like politicians who vacillate.
I think the truth is always interesting, but with politicians, you don’t get to see much of that.
The Blair government has lowered the standing of politics and politicians in our country.
People are tired of seeing politicians as all talk and no action.
Politicians, it’s in their job description to just lie, every day.
It’s to be a person who’s able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.
If there is a ‘Leave’ vote in England and across the U.K. as a whole, then we see the reins of power being seized by politicians who are on the right of the Conservative party.
Too many terms corrupts politicians so they only want to be reelected.
The popular tendency is to listen approvingly to the most extreme statements and claims of politicians and orators who seek popularity by declaring their own country right in everything and other countries wrong in everything.
It’s true that if you advise politicians on economic policy in the U.S. today, you spend your time in a cross between inquiry and combat. You are always on the periphery of harsh partisan warfare that has nothing to do with substance.
I answer that question by saying: ‘Why Meg Whitman’ which is: I’m not a career politician. I spent 30 years in business. I can tell you that people in California have had it with career politicians: they are done.
The Chinese public is deeply nationalist, which matters to China’s unelected political leadership as much as U.S. nationalism does to American politicians. As China becomes the world’s largest economy, there is meaningful public pressure for its power status to advance in parallel. Any alternative would be humiliating.
Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it – and indeed that’s what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act.
What’s new is that the White House itself has now been corporatized. It’s not politicians working for the corporate interests. They are the corporate interests. That’s where Bush came from, and Cheney and Rumsfeld.
You know, everybody knows some of what politicians say is malarkey, and having somebody there to call them on it is good. I’d be happy to do that any time and any place.
Baseball is a game that shouts, ‘Slow Down’ to America. Stop tweeting, texting, blogging, watching cable news, and obsessing about polls, lost planes, and focus-group-driven politicians.
We cannot collect enough taxes to catch up with spending. Do I know a solution? Not really. Do your politicians know a solution? Does our commander-in-chief offer a solution? Absolutely not.
Right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here. Some reporters make judgments, but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.
Ted Cruz is the Schroedinger’s cat of politicians. He is both eligible and not eligible to be president.
Are Republican women politicians more ‘feminine’ than Democratic women politicians?
The politicians of New York have everything that is necessary to make proper decisions and they will have to live with what happens afterwards. The worst scenario is the politicians covering their eyes and turning it over to the FBI.
The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.
The people of New Jersey stepped up. They shared in the sacrifice. You know what else they did? They rewarded politicians who lead instead of politicians who pandered.
The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have.
Politicians generally act as if there is no cost to reconnecting with voters by building new New Deals. But the whole exercise of writing law out of New Deal nostalgia is a form of national narcissism. Call it New Deal narcissism.
Everybody has an idea of the kind of society they’d like to live in, and I would like to live in one where our senior politicians were spirited and original and possibly even good at what they do.
The way I see politics is, I don’t think it’s cynical to accept the fact politicians are human beings, that they’re flawed, and they represent the best and the worst of us.
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.
The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics.
The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.
I am not attracted to those politicians who are short on vision and only want to make money. I like those who have vision.
It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided.
I think politicians misjudge our intelligence. We can, and do, see through them. But I quite enjoy watching political programmes because they get the heart going.
We are living in an age where it’s difficult to know what the truth is and we have got politicians in charge who actually appear to not really care what the truth is.
People in Indiana like to see their politicians at the county fair or the Rotary Club.
These new young politicians have given us the confidence to start dreaming again to believe there is a better politics, and a better future for Italy in general.
I’m sick and tired of politics and politicians as usual.
We shouldn’t require our politicians to be movie stars. Then again, we’re all influenced by charisma. It’s hard not to be. We all collectively fall for it.
Both politicians and journalists face situations which strain their honesty and humanity. My opinion is that politicians on the average stand up somewhat better than journalists.
What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren’t listening to them. They understand that we can’t solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants.
Rock helps me communicate directly with the people because rock doesn’t lie, and people are fed up with lying politicians.
In those days, the late 1970s, one of the leading politicians was a soon-to-be uncle by marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger, named Ted Kennedy.
When politicians say your voice does not matter because the NRA owns them, we say, ‘No more.’
One of the things that you have trouble with politicians, particularly in Washington, is when you get mad at them and you can’t touch them; you can’t punch them; you can’t yell at them.
The exciting quality about Joyce is that when you read him, you are not told of the large public issues that were agitating the minds of politicians and journalists on those days. Joyce is interested in the mind of a man who has put five shillings on a horse.
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal.
Modern politicians like Cameron dream of exerting paternal influence without being seen as paternalistic, of fostering moral behaviour without being considered moralistic.
I wanted to be a senator from Illinois. I was obsessed with politics. My dad was friends with a lot of local politicians, so I would hang out with them on Election Day and hand out buttons. Somehow, even though they were opposite, I loved Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I thought they were the coolest guys!
I think, as a secular woman who heads a religious party and lives in Tel Aviv, we don’t have so many problems on religion and state. Politicians, like Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, are trying to create these problems for all different reasons and interests in order to get more votes.
Nothing has done more to bring people of different races and different backgrounds together than athletics, certainly more than politicians have done. It’s why the Greeks invented the Olympics.
What I’m very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.
Young people, our rights and the things we care about, have been taken away because it doesn’t really matter to the politicians whether or not we have them. We’re just another demographic to try and please, but there’s no point if we aren’t voting.
If money is not maintained, it can collapse like a bridge along Interstate 5 and fixing it, even with determined politicians, will take ages, during which time God only knows how much human damage will occur.
I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.
We’ve got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the pedophiles and the politicians.
One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.
What generally happens in this county is that our politicians don’t serve us well because they don’t tell the truth, and they don’t keep their promises.
Remember in 1973 the same science chatter said that the coming Ice Age is going to occur, we’re going to lose millions of people. And the politicians knew how to solve it, they just didn’t have the courage to solve it; they were going to put coal dust on the Arctic.
Politicians are, in general, receptive to those who make the most noise.
In a democratic society, we politicians have to accept criticism, especially when it is founded.
Politicians love power. I love freedom. That is why I am not a politician.
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Normally, when politicians talk about ‘cutting the budget,’ they really mean reducing the amount of increase. Actual spending goes up while the politicians claim to have ‘cut the budget.’
Political folk talk a lot these days about ‘messaging’ – a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive – i.e., ‘Our messaging is designed to show we care.’
Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.
I am very worried about politicians who know that their countries are greatly benefiting financially and at the same time are saying that the European Union is not good for us. The message has to be coherent.
I’ve gotten to believe it’s more fun to play politicians than actually be them.
If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation.
Rather than seeking to stem the tide, our educators, politicians, and judges aid the advance of godlessness. This cannot continue if our children and grandchildren are to live in a country that still recognises God and upholds religious liberty.
Spending is not caring. Spending is what politicians do instead of caring. Spending more does not guarantee success. Politicians like to measure spending because it is easier than measuring actual metrics of accomplishment.
When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. ‘How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?’ Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through.
I suspect most politicians feel overwhelmed because people’s lives are a real struggle, full of unhappiness, and you would probably feel powerless to do anything about it.
It is the future, of course, which politicians grapple with, and that is why politics is so disorderly. Only history clears away some of the debris.
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
I find politicians globally are somewhat disappointing, not just in Ireland.
I believe there should be political consequences for politicians who commit voter suppression.
The American people don’t believe politicians. They don’t believe business leaders or Hollywood celebrities or athletes or other supposed role models. And they certainly don’t believe the news media.
I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.
Let the politicians debate equal pay and pursue the folly of a war on women in America.
In today’s politics, it would be good to have politicians who are more upfront about what they felt and actually not trying to bend with every breeze. They’re infuriating, all of them.
Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.
I will deal with the politicians in a political way and with the nonpoliticians in a nonpolitical way.
I am satisfied that all politicians were meant to be journalists and all journalists meant to be politicians.
As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.
Politicians like to confuse congressional spending with earmarks. There is a difference.
Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.
In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.
What’s fascinating about doing comedy about the referendum is, because it is the first time, it is the most extraordinary atmosphere. You find that if you are making jokes about politicians, it becomes intensely political.
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
Politicians shouldn’t spend most of their time in office trying to get reelected.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
Sometimes you get politicians who dig their feet into the sand and aren’t willing to listen to another voice.
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I’d far rather see for myself what’s going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
At the end of the day, the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott had to be converted into the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We don’t want politicians who’ve gotta be coaxed, cajoled and protested. We want them on our side from the beginning.
Even if politicians spew confusing, convoluted jargon, these people are still meant to represent me, and the only way that happens is if I stay informed and vote.
Its easy to view politicians as corrupt and voting essentially an act of picking the lesser of two evils. I understand that perspective and feel it’s valid.
McGeorge Bundy was a brilliant man who’d had a meteoric academic career and was the youngest man ever to be dean of the Harvard faculty. But he was also arrogant and looked upon all sorts of people and politicians as not to be taken all that seriously.
I think there is a break down of trust generally, between people and politicians. I think that’s come about for a whole variety of reasons.
Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls – before the public even knows to call them ‘issues’ at all.
You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don’t say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.
I think you will find scientists that think like you in Germany and Britain, and you will find politicians that think like Weinberger. I think the most bellicose ruling group in the Western world at the moment is the British.
Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep.
I don’t use names or captions for my many portraits of politicians and authors for newspapers. The drawing has to be self-explanatory, so I spend a lot of time sketching to find an idea and an angle that is clear.
I’m really interested in how we view the public figure, what makes a public figure, what makes a celebrity, and how images make politicians, so I take an interest in politics, but it’s really an interest in the image.
Port Royal, Jamaica, was built for pirates. The town had a well-protected harbor, corrupt politicians and townsfolk, and a set of ethics that seemed passed down from Sodom and Gomorrah.
The actions of my government are not bearable. They devastate our natural resources and deprive our people. The politicians speak piously while practicing greed and divisiveness. They care nothing for the nation. I want to do more than withdraw my support. I want to tar and feather them.
I saw the real difference between politicians who supported programs like Head Start and those who didn’t. I started getting really excited about politics.
I don’t want to watch ‘Newsnight.’ I just don’t understand those politicians who genuinely want to watch it for pleasure.
Politicians always think they know what people feel. It’s a fallacy, because there is no such thing as ‘the people.’ It is a discursive device for summoning the people that you want. You’re constructing the people, you’re not reflecting the people.
I’ve always been really uninterested in politicians and the acts of the Houses of Parliament, or government as an idea. But I’m interested in politics in that I’m a member of the world, and I have strong feelings of right and wrong, but I can’t get into the ins and outs of it.
Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.
I’ve always tried to avoid politics because most politicians that I know are quite dirty in terms of human dignity, ethics and morals.
Musicians can run this state better than politicians. We won’t get a lot done in the mornings, but we’ll work late and be honest.
What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don’t speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don’t get the rhetoric right. I think that’s a fair trade-off.
The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads.
There are some tremendous actors in the U.K. who have been knighted, and I’ve spent much of my life admiring many of them, like Laurence Olivier. So it’s very flattering to be in their company. But you also end up in the company of people you don’t admire, including some rather dodgy politicians.
I would be open about the fact that, clearly, politicians should be able to speak to each other. David Cameron doesn’t seem to accept this, but if the British people have voted then of course you have to try and provide good stable government.
Politicians want people to be nice neighbours, but the tools at their disposal are just the tools of modern liberal society, which are nothing.
Politicians are no different than the rest of the public.
Some people are born gardeners, some are politicians. I was an actor. It took a great deal of pain before I figured that out. I didn’t relate to most of it.
I guess it feels to me that the political argument that has been lost in my lifetime is taxation. How do you engage in that debate when people don’t trust politicians at all? It is almost impossible to start a conversation about taxation.
Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops.
The destructiveness of the tar sands is not inevitable. But Canadians and Albertans have become too tolerant of the politicians who compromise the nation’s energy security as well as the next generation’s future.
I think politicians who suggest they are uninterested in the support of newspapers are not being straight with people.
I’m inclined to think that, because it’s such an awful life, that politicians do go into it for the best reasons. I mean, some may love the sound of their own voice. But it’s such a wearying life, you’ve got to be impelled by some desire to leave the world a better place than when you came into it.
What matters is that the majority of American people have become complacent in a senseless injustice that occurs all around them. What matters is that most American politicians have become more easily swayed by money than by the people who voted them into office.
Society and the system and politicians don’t want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show ’em.
Well, I’m not that popular with the politicians, I have to say.
You know, larger-than-life politicians have larger-than-life strengths and larger-than-life weaknesses.
The central thesis of the American failure in Afghanistan – the one you’ll hear from politicians and pundits and even scholars – was succinctly propounded by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: ‘The war in Iraq drained resources from Afghanistan before things were under control’.
I manage my business; politicians are doing their business. I can only work within their rules and regulations. I can’t pick up a political fight.
Democratic politicians have disliked things I’ve written, Republican politicians… if they all love you, you might as well be driving a Good Humor truck.
We should look back now and then. Our politicians should look back every now and then.
Whether we or our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
One reason citizens, politicians and university donors sometimes lack confidence in the social sciences is that social scientists too often miss the chance to declare victory and move on to new frontiers.
All politicians are to some extent salesmen.
I think people feel threatened by homosexuality. The problem isn’t about gay people, the problem is about the attitude towards gay people. People think that all gays are Hannibal Lecters. But gay people are sons and daughters, politicians and doctors, American heroes and daughters of American heroes.
There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don’t say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
