American Politics Quotes

Look, the center right coalition in American politics today is best understood as a coalition of groups and individuals that on the issue that brings them to politics what they want from the government is to be left alone.

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.

A couple of weeks is a long time in American politics.

Nobody in a leadership level in American politics is trying to inspire the American people. Everybody needs to be goosed. The vast majority of people are not self-starters.

A wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios, and the long legislative battles over health care reform, financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

A typical vice of American politics the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.

The polls show that 10 percent of the public are ready to vote for me even though they don't know I'm running. We hope that figure won't drop when they learn I'm in the race.

I understand Jacqueline Kennedy has redone the White House in eighteenth-century style. Why, then, I'd fit in perfectly.

The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose.

Barry Goldwater has definitely decided to be a candidate in '64. He will campaign in all thirteen states.

...the traces to the East haven been broken, the Republican party will never again be dominated by the editorial writers for the New York Herald Tribune. Free at last.

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity.

Bobby Kennedy is so concerned with poverty because he didn't have any as a kid.

We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. "L.B.J." should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.

Of course, I may go into a strange bedroom every now and then that I don't want you to write about, but otherwise you can write everything.

John ain't been worth a damn since he started wearing $300 suits.

You know when you're milking a cow and you have all that foamy white milk in the bucket and you're just about through, when all of a sudden the cow switches her tail through a pile of manure and slaps it into that foamy white milk. That's Bill Fulbright.

As much as I cherish your [McCarthy's] right to a platform as an independent candidate I am not going to sit here quietly and listen to you denigrate the two party system. It has served our country well over the last two hundred years.

The most momentous fact about the pattern of American politics is that we live under a persistent, obdurate, one might almost say tyrannical, two-party system. We have the Republicans and we have the Democrats, and we have almost no one else, no other strictly political aggregate that amounts to a corporal's guard in the struggle for power.

Whether you are on the Right or the Left, everyone can agree that there are a lot of outside influences in American politics that are not good for the system. There's just too much money.

When you're talking with a person at this level of the government, at the very highest level, I think you have to be very discreet because he, President Clinton, is very aware that anything he says publicly can have a profound impact on American politics and on world politics.

The presidential candidates are offering prescriptions for everything from Iraq to healthcare, but listen closely. Their fixes are situational and incremental. Meanwhile, the underlying structural problems in American politics and government are systemic and prevent us from solving our most intractable challenges.

You almost have to be a rock star to generate the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

Pat Robertson is an embarrassment to the church and a danger to American politics, .. It's time for Christian leaders of all stripes to call on Robertson not just to apologize but to retire.

I wish that all Americans would realize that American politics is world politics.

It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy.

I do think British and American politics rhyme. They go in cycles. They go in Thatcher-Reagan cycles, Blair-Clinton cycles.

The cost of appearing with a bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

One thing I don't want around me is a military intellectual. I don't have to worry about you on that score.

In Washington I'm thought of as a conservative, but in Tennessee I'm thought of as a Bolshevik.

I'm not the Carter who'll never tell a lie.

The President needs me at the White House. It's autumn, you know, and the leaves need raking.

There was a time when "sound as a dollar" was a description, not a joke.

I'm convinced Mr. Reagan would never be elected- I don't think his views are held by a majority of the American people...it's the Republican party that's going to be committing suicide by nominating candidates of that genre.

People always think American politics is very different, but usually it is a predictor of what happens in the politics elsewhere.

The most critical problem we face, not only in the barrios, but in Nicaragua and Central America, is that of the threat of an invasion by the United States.

Third parties in America gravitate not only to the extremes, but to irrelevance. (John Anderson's upcoming presidential campaign will undoubtedly confirm both tendencies.)

I always say, when they ask me about American politics, is for you guys to decide who you elect.

American politics is always somewhat fluid. In this age of social media, it means that voters can swing back and forth.

A generation ago [the Democratic Party] stood for progressive change. Now they defend every federal program as if each were sacred. They have become the most conservative force in American politics.

The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism. They're soft on Democracy.

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

In addition to the decline in competition, American politics today is characterized by a growing ideological polarization between the two major political parties.

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way.

I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.

What could be more absurd than the idea that genuine anti-Christian prejudice is a major force in American politics.