The 25 Best Quotes About Politics

1) “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.” – Thomas Sowell

2) “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” – Charles Krauthammer

3) “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” — Aristotle

4) “That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”— Thomas Jefferson

5) “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” — Eric Hoffer

6) “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” — Teddy Roosevelt

7) “We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.” – Ronald Reagan

8) “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” — Robert Heinlein

9) “And many writers have imagined for themselves republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

10) “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” — Samuel Adams

11) “With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.” — Rand Paul

12) “How many times have we heard ‘free tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free? The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy.” — Walter Williams

13) “Compromise is very difficult in a political environment in which a deal is not a deal. Whether the question is trading robust immigration enforcement for an amnesty benefiting those illegals already present in the country or trading tax increases for spending cuts according to some agreed-upon ratio, the main obstacle is not ideology or partisan self-interest, but the belief – a well-justified belief – that cutting a long-term deal is pointless, because such deals will not stand. “— Kevin Williamson

14) “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil…..Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even, is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of resistance…..Again, like an idea deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent.” – Eric Hoffer

15) “The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins — that is, until the late evening newscast, when suddenly we are plunged into the world as it is. Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest. Two examples would be the priest who wants to be a bishop and bootlicks and politicks his way up, justifying it with the rationale, ‘After I get to be bishop I’ll use my office for Christian reformation,’ or the businessman who reasons, ‘First I’ll make my million and after that I’ll go for the real things in life,’ Unfortunately one changes in many ways on the road to the bishopric or the first million, and then one says, ‘I’ll wait until I’m a cardinal and then I can be more effective,’ or ‘I can do a lot more after I get two million’ — and so it goes. In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of ‘the common good’ and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed.” – Saul Alinsky

16) “America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance–and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.” – Ayn Rand

17) “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” — Thomas Jefferson

18) “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” — Attributed to Harry Truman

19) “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” —  

20) “If you are explaining, you are losing.” — J.C. Watts

21) “All politics is local.” — Tip O’Neill

22) “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” — Michael Kinsley

23) “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” — Megan McCardle

24)  “The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.” — Plato

25) “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” – Winston Churchill