Cynical Quotes About Politics and Politicians

Notable quotes about politics and politicians serve as definitions of the words. These quotes represent the public’s image of the political system and good and bad politicians. Most of the quotes selected here are those that are cynical and often “cutting.” The word “politics” comes from the classical Greek root form “politic,” which means meaning “city,” “citizen,” “civic.” Both the words “politics” and “politicians” have acquired negative connotations, often strongly so. For example, Greek philosophers like Plato described politics as “nothing but corruption.”

Modern politics in the US highlights the public and personal aspects of politicians’ lives. And, it is often scandals that are the downfall of politicians, even though they may not leave their office until the end of their term. When a skilled politician occupies an office, he or she can increase its credibility. However, not every politician will be able to form alliances or make the best policies of the position. Only some will not be without influence. However, success is rarely constant. Political winds shift and alliances change. Hence, the term of office of any politician may be marked by periods of greater and lesser success. The following cynical quotes give examples of the disdain for politics and how the lesser successes of politicians are often viewed.

One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.-Donald Trump

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.-Mao Tse-Tung

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.-Franklin P. Adams

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.-Henry Brooks Adams

The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.- Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.- Saul David Alinsky

The truly skillful politician is one who, when he comes to a fork in the road, goes both ways. Marco A. Almazan

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.-Oscar Ameringer

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change-within himself, not on the outside.- Joseph Brodsky

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.- Albert Einstein

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.-Texas Guinan

In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy.- Brian Mulroney

Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.- Thomas Jefferson

Politics are a labyrinth without a clue.- John Adams

Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome. -Benjamin Whichcote

A politician is a person who thinks twice before he says nothing.- Joe Moore

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.- Maria Montessori

A week is a long time in politics.- Harold Wilson

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.-
Henry Louis Mencken

He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.- Sir Walter Besant

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.- Charles De Gaulle

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.- Henry Adams

Lighthouse: A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.- Anonymous

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.- John Kenneth Galbraith

I’ve seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I’ve seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head.-George Wallace

In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.-J. G. C. Minchin

The way my luck is running, if I were a politician I would be an honest man.-Rodney Dangerfield

Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole.- John F. Kennedy

We have two types of politicians-the incapable and those capable of anything.-Slogan written on a wall in Paraguay, according to the Economist

We have seen a growing mismatch between the command of media communication shown by the most talented politicians, and the halting, uneven progress which they can deliver through the machinery of government.- Tom Bentley, Director of Demos, a British Think Tank

The more successful a political party, the more winning its ways, the less of its time is spent casting about for policy or determining it principles. But, political parties with principles or even without them, have a common need for money; someone has to pay for the television commercials.- Dalton Camp, Canadian political commentator

In joining a political party, people shouldn’t have to swear everlasting agreement with every jot and title of their party’s policy manifesto. Debate, disagreement, argument, are good for democracy not bad.-William Watson, Columnist & McGill University Professor

If politicians lived on praise and thanks they’d be forced into some other line of business.- Edward Heath, British Prime Minister

There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible.- Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British Prime Minister

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.-Sir Robert Peel, British Prime Minister

Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole.- John F. Kennedy

The best time to listen to a politician is when he’s on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he’s exhausted. Then he doesn’t lie.-Theodore H. White

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.- John Jay Chapman

Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.-Mao Tse-Tung

Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist.- Jim Hightower

Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.- Bernard Crick

Finality is not the language of politics.- Benjamin Disraeli

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.- Will Rogers

When we win on an issue we call it leadership. When we lose, we call it politics. Practicing politics simply means increasing your options for effective results.- John Eldred

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.-Goethe

The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.- Bernard Crick

Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their ‘politics’. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states. For most people, political activity is a secondary activity – that is to say, they have something else to do beside attending to these arrangements. But the activity is one which every member of the group who is not a child nor a lunatic has some part and some responsibility.-Michael Oakshott

Politics, a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.-Ambrose Pierce

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.- John Morley

Gratitude is not a normal feature of political life.-Lord Kilmuir

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.-Franklin Roosevelt

Politics makes strange post-masters.-Kin Hubbard

Politics is not like an ocean voyage or a military campaign� something which leaves off as soon as reached. It is not a public chore to be gotten over with. It is a way of life.- Plutarch

After long experience of politics, I have never found that there is any inhibition caused by ignorance as regards criticism.- Harold Macmillan

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.- Henry Brooke Adam

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.- Nikita Khrushchev

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.- Napoleon

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.- Ronald Reagan

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.- John Galbraith

Politicians used to put out leaflets with pictures of their family and pet dog and copies of their lousy speeches and it would be enough. Unfortunately many politicians now just create a web site with pictures of their family and pet dog and their lousy speeches but it is not good enough.- Stephen Coleman, Oxford Internet Institute

The political technology of the Industrial age is no longer appropriate technology for the new civilization taking form around us. Our politics are obsolete.-Alvin Toffler

High-powered politicians had reams of statistics and analysis why a set of international investing rules would make the world a better place. They were no match, however, for a global ban of grass roots organizations, which, with little more than computers and access to the Internet, helped derail a deal.-Madelaine Drohan

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.- Mao Tse Tung
When you argue or plead with a Politician, expecting him to suddenly become as smart as required by Law, you will have much greater Assurance in Hope and Fun watching the Melting of the Greenland Ice.-Poldi Meindl

It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life.-Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address, June, 1936

If you ever injected the truth into politics, you would have no politics.-Will Rogers

Politics, and the fate of man, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.-Albert Camus

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.-
Charles De Gaulle

The only people who say worse things about politicians than reporters do are other politicians.-Andy Rooney

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.-Mao Tse-Tung

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.-John Kenneth Galbraith

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.-Indira Nehru Gandhi

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.-R. A. Butler

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.-
Robert Louis Stevenson

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The word politics is derived from the word poly, meaning many, and the word ticks, meaning bloodsucking parasites.-Larry Hardiman

A dilemma is a politician trying to save both of his faces at once.-John A. Lincoln

Render any politician down and there’s enough fat to fry an egg.-Terence ”Spike” Milligan

In political discussion, heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.-J. G. Minchin

In politics, people give you what they think you deserve, and deny you what you think you want.-Cecil Parkinson

Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.-Sir John Quinton

The effectiveness of a politician varies in inverse proportion to his commitment to a principle.-Sam Shaffer

Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.-Saul Bellow

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.-Ambrose Bierce

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.-R. Buckminster Fuller

In politics it is necessary either to betray one’s country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.-Charles de Gaulle

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.-Lady Bird Johnson

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.-Nikita Khrushchev

The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face.-Clare Boothe Luce

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.-
Thomas B. Macaulay

Turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you.-Ralph Nader