Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Politics Quotes
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.
What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don’t know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that’s my position. (Molly Ivins, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000)
The contradiction between political promise and performance is quite understandable when we dig into the nature of the business, breaking through the moral crust with which political institutions have surrounded themselves. When we look to beginnings, we see clearly what it is all about, for then the purpose of political power was unencumbered with persiflage; […]
Yet lies seem essential in politics and government. In a cynical mood, George Orwell once wrote, “Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” That was unavoidable, he noted, because “political speech” is “largely the defense of the indefensible.” Nixon at one point told his friend Leonard Garment, “You’re never going […]
It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.
I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether.
Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.
Only when it comes to politicians are adjectives like “centrist” and “extremist” used to convey no factual information beyond “good dog!” and “bad dog!”
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
