Politics affects everything, whether you pay attention to it or not. These quotes cover power, democracy, partisanship, idealism, corruption, and the exhausting but essential work of trying to govern millions of people who disagree about nearly everything.
“Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning.”
“The lesson of the last year is this: foreign policy can't be managed through the politics of personality, and our President would do well to take note of an observation John F. Kennedy made once he was in office - that all of the world's problems aren't his predecessor's fault.”
“I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.”
“They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.”
“I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.”
“Whether one believes or not, religion is as real a force in the life of the world as economics or politics, and it demands fair-minded attention. Even if you think the entire religious enterprise is at best misguided and at worst counterproductive, it remains vital, inspiring great good and, sometimes, great evil.”
“Pennsylvania is a very tough state people don't last long in Pennsylvania politics.”
“I think that people are tired. They're tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.”
“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”
“Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning.”
“Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.”
“In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.”
“When I first started working in politics, as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign, it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.”
“I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more.”
“When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. After all, nobody's right all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“I know enough about European politics to know you've got a lot of crazy people who make their way onto the ballot.”