Saturday Quote-a-thon: Politics

Because, why not: quotes about or by politicians.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
--Winston Churchill

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Tom Lehrer

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
- Paul Valery

Americans have different ways of saying things; they say "elevator", we say "lift"; they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git."
- Alexai Sayle

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.
- Aneurin Bevan, on Harold Macmillan

A nonentity with side whiskers.
- Woodrow Wilson, on Chester A. Arthur

I must remind the right honorable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.
- Clement Atlee, on Winston Churchill

An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Atlee got out.
- Winston Churchill, on Clement Atlee

As with mosquitoes, horseflies, and most bloodsucking parasites, Kenneth Starr was spawned in stagnant water.
- James Carville

He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill, on Stanley Baldwin

We make fun of George W. Bush, but this morning he was at work bright and early. Okay, he was early.
- Jay Leno

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter, if he'd run unopposed he would have lost.
- Mort Sahl

It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it.
- Winston Churchill

He looks as though he's been weaned on a pickle.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth, on Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge didn't say much, and when he did he didn't say much.
- Will Rogers, on Calvin Coolidge

A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.
- Benjamin Disraeli, on William Gladstone

If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone pulled him out, it would be a calamity.
- Benjamin Disraeli, on William Gladstone

He is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.
- Lyndon Baines, Johnson on Gerald Ford

He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.
- Lyndon Baines, Johnson on Gerald Ford

His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.
- William McAdoo, on Warren Harding

Any political party that can't cough up anything better than a treacherous brain-damaged old vulture like Hubert Humphrey deserves every beating it gets. They don't hardly make 'em like Hubert any more - but just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.
- Hunter S. Thompson, on Hubert Humphrey, 1973

An offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity.
- General McCellan, on Abraham Lincoln

Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
- Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan

A little emasculated mass of inanity.
- Theodore Roosevelt, on Henry James

A politician is a person who approaches every subject with an open mouth.
- Adlai Stevenson

The Prime Minister tells us she has given the French president a piece of her mind, not a gift I would receive with alacrity.
- Denis Healy

Bessie Braddock: Sir, you are drunk.
Churchill: Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.
-Winston Churchill

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
-Winston Churchill

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled, the more I gain.
-- Susan B. Anthony

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that, by inefficiency or otherwise, he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
-Theodore Roosevelt

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
-John F. Kennedy

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
-John F. Kennedy