Quotes about politics

Politics can only be a small part of what we are. It’s a way of seeing, it’s not all-seeing in itself, and people like me, who were fortunate enough to be born and educated before the start of the tragedy that has engulfed the North of Ireland, found the panacea of politics to be a bitter cul-de-sac.

“What we’re doing here is bigger than politics.”

“I know,” he said. “I just keep hoping the politicians see it too.”

It’s the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

“Politics,” he spat. “Everyone is always looking for material to use against everybody else.”

In politics, wishful thinking just gives the wolves a license to howl.

Wars are a summer pastime, Althalus. Politics is a year-round entertainment.

Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn’t matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It’s the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say.

When politicians use bad science to justify themselves, rather than good science to make up their minds, we can safely assume that wrongheaded and even disastrous decisions lie ahead.

Scrabbling like mad at their beloved fence, the politicians tried to avoid taking a definite position on either side.

The sad truth about political saints of any given past is that nobody but a scholar will take the trouble to read their complete works and try to see them whole.

"Oh, diplomacy," said M.D., in his element, "it mops up war’s spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents."