Quotes & Sayings About Dirty Politics

Politics is a dirty, ruthless business, Agent Robie. It makes the intelligence sector look relatively honorable by comparison. — David Baldacci

I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it. — Charles Bukowski

Politics is still the man's game. The women are allowed to do the chores, the dirty work, and now and then
but only occasionally
one is present at some secret conference or other. But it's not the rule. They can go out and get the vote, if they can and will; they can collect money, they can be grateful for being permitted to work. But that is all. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

I've always tried to avoid politics because most politicians that I know are quite dirty in terms of human dignity, ethics and morals. — Steven Seagal

The fear of blacks has become the dirty little secret of our political culture. — Norman Podhoretz

Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress. — Jeffrey Tucker

Most Tea Party members are old pride-filled morons who have no good reasoning to concern themselves with politics, just tired old self-righteous and self-proclaimed patriots wanting to start some type of Nazi-like revolution, mainly because they hate Obama and they have a dumb sense that their lives and generation is quickly coming to a halt and none of them like it. They claim they don't want their rights stripped away from them, so they will do anything in their power to stop that, including stripping away the rights of others. — J.C. Wickhart

A lot of history is just dirty politics cleaned up for the consumption of children and other innocents. — Richard Reeves

politics was a necessarily dirty game of treachery and deceit. — Dave Robinson

I awake to canine asshole. "Noel, get your twinkler outta here!" I scream.
Andy's in his favourite cargo shorts ... "But wouldn't mankind be better off if we all did the Presentation of the Anus? Summit meetings of world leaders should be preceded by a Presentation of the Anus."
"It would give new meaning to dirty politics," I say, still pushing Noel away. — Rodney Ross

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business. — Richard M. Nixon

People even said I was a racist because I shot black bank robbers at the beginning of Dirty Harry. So, first I'm labeled right-wing. Then I'm a racist. Now it's macho or male chauvinism. It's a whole number nowadays to make people feel guilty on different levels. It doesn't bother me because I know where the fuck I am on the planet and I don't give a shit. — Clint Eastwood

Conservatives may be right when they argue that the government should not try to determine executive pay packages. But conservatives should at least be willing to speak out against unseemly behavior in corporate boardrooms with the same moral force, the same sense of outrage that they direct against dirty rap lyrics. — Barack Obama

There's a lot of dirty theology out there, the religious counterpart to dirty politics and dirty business, I suppose. You might call it spiritual pornography - a kind of for-profit exploitative nakedness. It's found in many of the same places as physical pornography (the Internet and cable TV for starters), and it promises similar things: instant intimacy, fantasy and make-believe, private voyeurism and vicarious experience, communion without commitment. That's certainly not what we're after in these pages. No, we're after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the ... — Brian D. McLaren

Unfortunately, 'climate' has become a dirty word - obviously in politics, but even to some degree in my world, in venture capital. People hesitate if they see something that's purported to be green. That's not a reason to invest for many people. — Evan Williams

It's (Politics) rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But it's the only sport for grownups. — Robert A. Heinlein

Politics is dirty. Politics is exciting. Politics is often very, very difficult and disappointing. And I really would rather the world would be a little more like it was when my dad was young, where you knew pretty much where people stood on the great moral issues. — James Dobson

Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself. — Kevin Rudd

Politics can be very mean and dirty. The things politicians say about each other, and what activists say, I had a brief glimpse of that for a couple of days. If I ever had any questions about whether I wanted to run for office, I now know the answer - I don't. — Matt Hasselbeck

Princes give rewards with their own hands,
But death or punishment by the hands of other. — John Webster

There is this concept of politics as a dirty game. It's a difficult game, but it doesn't have to be dirty. I think this is what we need to bring to politics. I think politics around the world has very often been captured by big interests - 'lobbies' they call them in the States. — George Papandreou

Don't ever get involved in politics, Theo. It's a dirty game. — John Grisham

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous.
But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. — John Steinbeck

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious. — Tom Cotton

How did sex come to be thought of as dirty in the first place? God must have been a Republican. — Will Durst

There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences, this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. — Louis L'Amour

We tend to think of politics as bad, full of dirty tricks, negative ads, big campaigns, but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics, which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions. — Eric Liu

There is a reason the Democrats have had only two Presidents since 1968 and have managed to lose control of both houses of Congress in recent years. There is a reason they keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And it's not fraud and it's not dirty politics and it's not stupid voters. It's the plain and simple fact that the majority of those who vote don't like them. — Pat Sajak

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics. — Edna Ferber

It will help erase the idea that politics is a second-rate profession and a dirty business. — Robert Kennedy

That our popular art forms have become so obsessed with sex has turned the U.S.A into a nation of hobbledehoys; as if grown people don't have more vital concerns, such as taxes, inflation, dirty politics, earning a living, getting an education, or keeping out of jail. — Anita Loos

Theodore Senior belonged to a class and a generation that considered politics to be a dirty business, best left, like street cleaning, to malodorous professionals. — Edmund Morris

When I was eighteen or twenty, I knew everything except what I wanted. I knew all about people, and poetry, and love, and music, and politics, and baseball, and history, and I played pretty good jazz piano. And then I went traveling, because I felt that I might have missed something and it would be a good idea to learn it before I got my master's degree. (...) And the older I grew, and the farther I traveled, the younger I grew and the less I knew. I could feel it happening to me. I could actually walk down a dirty street and feel all my wisdom slipping away from me, all the things I wrote term papers about. — Peter S. Beagle

the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development — Albert Einstein

You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off. — Scott Lynch

Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you. — Will Shetterly

We cannot put cinema in parallel with the political, because politics are something dirty and cinema is not dirty. — Ali Suliman

Truth will never shine from a heart filled with corruption and lies. — Suzy Kassem

The aristocrats and bureaucrats are dirty rats. — Ray Davies

Politics is dirty, and I don't like to talk about dirty things ... My conscience is clear. — Johannes Heesters

Politics were so very simple, the Cardinal thought, just so long as a man believed no one, double-crossed everyone, kept a full treasury, and inveigled others into doing the dirty work. — Bernard Cornwell

We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. — Ciaran Hinds

I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty. — John Mellencamp

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations; Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor. — Jon Meacham