Statesman And Politician Quotes & Sayings

If, of course, there is neither freedom nor any moral law based on freedom, but only a state in which everything that happens or can happen simply obeys the mechanical workings of nature, politics would mean the art of utilising nature for the government of men, and this would constitute the whole of practical wisdom; the concept of right would then be only an empty idea. But if we consider it absolutely necessary to couple the concept of right with politics, or even to make it a limiting condition of politics, it must be conceded that the two are compatible. And I can indeed imagine a moral politician, i.e. someone who conceives of the principles of political expediency in such a way that they can co-exist with morality, but I cannot imagine a political moralist, i.e. one who fashions his morality to suit his own advantage as a statesman. — Immanuel Kant

It is a maxim, founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it. — George Washington

The fastest way for a politician to become an elder statesman is to lose an election. — Earl Wilson

You know, a statesman is a dead politician. — Arlen Specter

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country. This is not so strange when you reflect that from the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture ... — W. Somerset Maugham

The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny. — Edmund Burke

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts ... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician. — John Maynard Keynes

There's a certain clubbiness to the idea that you're an ex-president. You're no longer a politician. You're a statesman. — Robert Dallek

Given a short time with a psycho-politician you can alter forever the loyalty of a soldier in our hands or a statesman or a leader in his own country, or you can destroy his mind. — Lavrentiy Beria

All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery. — Ludwig Von Mises

That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman. — Plato

A statesman makes the occasion, but the occasion makes the politician. — George Stillman Hillard

There is a difference between the typical politician and the statesman. A typical politician is that person who tells people what people want to hear, while the statesman tells people what people need to know. — Oscar Arias

At home, you always have to be a politician; when you're abroad, you almost feel yourself a statesman. — Harold Macmillan

Self-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips. — Newell Dwight Hillis

A candidate with no experience they would package as a citizen politician, a lifetime hack as an elder statesman. — Rick Perlstein

A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard. — James Russell Lowell

A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation. — James Freeman Clarke

A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service. — Georges Pompidou

The politician, Johnson's experience had taught him, could make promises without keeping them; words spoken in public had little relation to the practical conduct of daily life. But whatever justification a politician may claim for deceptions, the statesman must align his words with his action. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

A statesman is he who thinks in the future generations, and a politician is he who thinks in the upcoming elections. — Abraham Lincoln

A statesman is any politician it's considered safe to name a school after. — Bill Vaughan

A shambling, hairy, brutish, but probably very cunning creature with a big brain behind; so someone, I think it was Sir Harry Johnston, has described Homo Neanderthalensis. To this day we must still use similar terms to describe the soul of the politician. The statesman has still to oust the politician from his lairs and weapon heaps. History has still to become a record of human dignity. Finance — H.G.Wells

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years. — Harry S. Truman

It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. — Edward Bernays

A statesman's words, like butcher's meat, should be well weighed. — Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth. — Adlai E. Stevenson

A statesman is a successful politician who is dead. — Thomas Reed

A politician thinks about the next elections - the statesman thinks about the next generations. — James Freeman

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen. — Bob Edwards

But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution. — Edmund Burke

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman. — David Lloyd George

The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them. — Austin O'Malley