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Politics and Leadership Quotes

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A leader is a dealer in hope. – Napoleon

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. – John F. Kennedy

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke

The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, “What a dust do I raise!” – Aesop

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. – Aesop

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. – Aesop

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. – Great Law of the Iroquois

There is a tide in the affairs of men. – Julius Caesar

The truth is treason in the Empire of Lies. – Ron Paul

One should not focus on the differences between people but look for commonality and similarity. – Theodore Levitt

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away. – Ronald Reagan

Superficial goals lead to superficial results. – Attila the Hun

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill

Honor is doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking. – Unknown

If a man is to shed the light of the Sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself. – Romain Rolland

Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. – Howard Zinn

Man is free at the instant he wants to be. – Voltaire

Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That’s why great ideas are initially resisted. – Hugh MacLeod

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. – Theodore Roosevelt

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. – Laozi

If I advance, follow me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me! – Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. – Andrew Carnegie

A group becomes a team when all members are sure enough of themselves and their contributions to praise the skill of others. – Norman Shidle

Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. – Vince Lombardi

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. – Aristoteles

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. – Jim Rohn

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. – Plato

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. – Isaac Asimov

Witty Quotes

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Some of my favorite witty quotes just here, for you.

His mouth is a no-go area. It’s like kissing the Berlin Wall – Helena Bonhem Carter on Woody Allen

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. – Henry Kissinger

He has a face like a Saint – A Saint Bernard. – Unknown

A fellow with the inventiveness of Albert Einstien, but with the attention span of Daffy Duck. – Tom Shale on Robin Williams

If I found her floating in my pool, I’d punish my dog. – Joan Rivers on Yoko Ono

God does not play dice with the universe. – Albert Einstien

She is as wholesome as a bowl of cornflakes and at least as sexy. – Dwight McDonald on Doris Day

If you can’t convince them, confuse them. – President Harry S Truman

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with. – W C Fields

He had the compassion of an icicle and the generosity of a pawnbroker. – S J Perelman on Groucho Marx

Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. – Abbey Hoffman

Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder? – Don Rickles

Breasts like Granite and a brain like Swiss Cheese – Billy Wilder on Marilyn Monroe

The thief of bad gags. – Walter Winchell on Milton Berne

I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born – Ronald Reagan

He’s proof that there’s life after death. – Mort Sahl on Ronald Reagan

Witty QuotesThe only genius with an IQ of 60. – Gore Vidal on Andy Warhol

He’s so ugly they ought to donate his face to the world wildlife fund. – Muhammad Ali on Joe Frazier

She’s so stupid she returns bowling balls because they’ve got holes in them. – Joan Rivers on Bo Derek

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. – Bob Wells

Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little. – Screen Tester on Fred Astaire

An empty suit that goes to funerals and plays golf. – Ross Perot on Dan Quayle

Most of the time he sounds like he has a mouth full of toilet paper. – Rex Reed on Marlon Brando

He could start a row in an empty house – Sir Alex Ferguson on footballer Dennis Wise

When Kissinger can get the Nobel Peace Prize, what is there left for satire? – Tom Lehrer on Henry Kissinger

Shaw writes his plays for the ages, the ages between five and twelve. – George Nathan on George Bernard Shaw

He is to acting what Liberace was to pumping iron. – Rex Reed on Sylvester Stallone

What makes him think a middle aged actor, who’s played with a chimp, could have a future in politics? – Ronald Reagan commenting on Eastwood’s bid to become mayor of Carmel

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. – Shakespeare

Quotes and Observations

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“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” ~Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then, I repeat myself. ~Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ~Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. ~George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. ~G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. ~James Bovard, (Civil Libertarian, 1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. ~Douglas Casey *Bill Clinton’s Classmate at Georgetown University

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~P.J. O’Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. ~Frederic Bastiat, French Economist, 1801-1850

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.~Ronald Reagan 1986

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. ~Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free! ~P.J. O’Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. ~Voltaire 1764

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you! ~Pericles 430 B.C.

No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. ~Mark Twain 1866

Talk is cheap except when Congress does it. ~Unknown

The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. ~Ronald Reagan

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. ~Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. ~Mark Twain

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. ~Herbert Spencer English Philosopher 1820-1903

There is no distinctly Native American criminal class …save Congress. ~Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. ~Edward Langley Artist,1928-1995

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. ~Thomas Jefferson

Determination Quotes

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– “It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” – William Somerset Maugham

– “It was courage, faith, endurance and a dogged determination to surmount all obstacles that built this bridge.” – John J. Watson

– “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” – John Calvin Coolidge

– “The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke

– “Fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round – remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.” – James Corbett

– “Determination is the wake-up call to the human will.” – Anthony (Tony) Robbins

– “A leader, once convinced that a particular course of action is the right one, must….be undaunted when the going gets tough.” – Ronald Reagan

– “We will either find a way or make one.” – Hannibal

– “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” – Vince Lombardi

– “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it – but all that had gone before.” – Jacob Riis

– “The more you prepare, the luckier you appear.” – Terry Josephson

– “If-determination is fine but needs to be tempered with self-control.” – Unknown

– “Bear in mind, if you are going to amount to anything, that your success does not depend upon the brilliancy and the impetuosity with which you take hold, but upon the ever lasting and sanctified buldoggedness with which you hang on after you have taken hold.” – Dr. A. B. Meldrum

– “A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.” – Robert Hughes

Military Quotes

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The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave…  –Patrick Henry

Victory belongs to the most persevering. –Napoleon Bonaparte

From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. –Thomas Jefferson

We have met the enemy and they are ours! –Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, 1813

Veni, Vedi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) –Julius Caesar

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. –John Stewart Mill


War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over. –William Tecumseh Sherman

Freedom isn’t free. –Anonymous

Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. –Winston Churchill

If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move, pick it up; and if you can’t pick it up, paint it. –Anonymous (1940’s saying)

The ‘eathen in ‘is blindness must end where ‘e began. But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man! –Rudyard Kipling

Soldiers are men…most apt for all manner of services and best able to support and endure the infinite toils and continual hazards of war. –Henry Knyvett

A soldier is he whose blood makes the glory of the general. –Adapted from Henry G. Bohn

Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats. –Josephus Daniels

Two armies are two bodies which meet and try to frighten each other. –Napoleon I

Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don’t have that problem. –Ronald Reagan

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. –John F. Kennedy

A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons. –Admiral David D. Porter, USN

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. –George Patton

Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it. –Will Rogers

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war. –Thucydides

Soldiers usually win the battles and generals get the credit for them. –Napoleon Bonaparte

We make war that we may live in peace. –Aristotle

In war there is no substitute for victory. –General Douglas MacArthur

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. –Ernest Miller Hemmingway

The number of medals on an officer’s breast varies in inverse proportion to the square of the distance of his duties from the front line. –Charles Edward Montague

Always forgive your enemies–nothing annoys them so much. –Oscar Wilde

Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision.–Blake Clark

Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.–Helvetius

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier. –Samuel Johnson

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. –George Orwell

Now I recall the Recon Marines ragged, filthy cammie shirted young men in green paint who move silent like the fog with deadly purpose in their eyes. Swift, Silent, Deadly. I smile. –GYSGT Correll, USMC, Retired Recon Marine

Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.–Ferdinand Foch at the Battle of the Marne

Music Quotes

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“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.” – Ed Gardner

“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” – Robert Fripp

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” – Plato

“Life is one grand, sweet song so start the music.” – Ronald Reagan

“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.” – Bill Cosby

“Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.” – Samuel Johnson

“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.” – Lao Tzu

“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.” – Elvis Presley

“Music is a safe kind of high.” – Jimi Hendrix

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” – Victor Hugo

Politics Quotes

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

“Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.” – Thomas Jefferson

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

“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.” – Eugene McCarthy

“Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” – Winston Churchill

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” – John Adams

“Politics have no relation to morals.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

“It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.” – Ronald Reagan

Progress Quotes

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– “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

– “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

– “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

– “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” – Albert Einstein

– “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” – Barack Obama

– “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.” – Ronald Reagan

– “We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.” – Mohandas Gandhi

– “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” – Mohandas Gandhi

– “Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.” – Mohandas Gandhi

– “It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.” – Jim Rohn

– “Make measurable progress in reasonable time.” – Jim Rohn

– “Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.” – Jim Rohn

– “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” – Kahlil Gibran

– “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin

– “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” – John F. Kennedy

– “The best road to progress is freedom’s road.” – John F. Kennedy

– “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.” – C. S. Lewis

– “It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Courage Quotes

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– “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
– “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” – Maya Angelou
– “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” – Maya Angelou
– “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” – Maya Angelou

– “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou

– “One man with courage is a majority.” – Thomas Jefferson

– “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” – Albert Einstein

– “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” – Ronald Reagan

– “There are no easy answers’ but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” – Ronald Reagan

– “You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.” – Abraham Lincoln

– “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

– “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

– “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” – Winston Churchill

– “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

– “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” – Mark Twain

– “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” – John Wooden

– “Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?” – William Shakespeare

– “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” – C. S. Lewis

– “How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.” – Benjamin Franklin

– “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” – John F. Kennedy

Ronald Reagan Quotes

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– “A people free to choose will always choose peace.”
– “A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?”
– “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.”
– “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
– “All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”
– “Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.”

– “Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.”

– “But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.”

– “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

– “Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”

– “Don’t be afraid to see what you see.”

– “Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.”

– “Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.”

– “Facts are stubborn things.”

– “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

– “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

– “Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.”

– “Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.”

– “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

– “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”