Politics Quotes
Quotes that will live in infamy.
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Politics Quotes
Floating from old-timey radios and off the pages of banned books, these quotes changed history forever. Click on any politics quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
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"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"And that's the way it is."Source: CBS Evening News | Speaker: Walter Cronkite
"And they brought us whole binders full of women."Source: 2012 Presidential Debate | Speaker: Mitt Romney
"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."Source: Inauguration Address, January 20, 1961 | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it."Source: Introduction to Poetry | Author: Billy Collins
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."Source: February 5, 2008 Speech | Speaker: Barack Obama
"Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."Source: The King and I | Speaker: King Mongkut of Siam
"Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife."Source: Gladiator | Speaker: Maximus Decimus Meridius
"Follow the money."Source: All the President's Men | Speaker: Deep Throat
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here!"Source: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | Speaker: President Merkin Muffley
"Good morning, Vietnam!"Source: Good Morning, Vietnam | Speaker: Adrian Cronauer
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"Source: McCarthy Hearings | Speaker: Joseph Welch
"Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone."Source: "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" | Speaker: Pink Floyd
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."Source: Misquoted | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Hitler didn't snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."Source: A Republican Rally in Baltimore, Maryland | Speaker: Jesse Owens
"I can see Russia from my house!"Source: TV Interview | Speaker: Sarah Palin
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."Source: Televised Press Conference | Speaker: Bill Clinton
"I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom."Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Author: Frederick Douglass
"I invented the internet."Source: Al Gore | Speaker: Al Gore
"I know nothing!"Source: Hogan's Heroes | Speaker: Sergeant Hans Schultz
"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, Black young women—playing with their dogs on the White House lawn."Source: 2016 Democratic National Convention Speech | Speaker: Michelle Obama
"I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules."Source: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | Speaker: Jefferson Smith
"If it weren't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics."Source: The Great McGinty | Speaker: Skeeters
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."Source: Misquote | Speaker: Joseph Goebbels
"In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."Source: 1965 Speech | Speaker: Margaret Thatcher
"It is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved."Source: The Prince | Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you […] persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"It's good to be the king."Source: The History of the World: Part I | Speaker: King Louis XVI
"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."Source: Batman Begins | Speaker: Batman
"It's this century. It still does perplex me so."Source: American Horror Story: Coven | Speaker: Delphine LaLaurie
"Let them eat cake!"Source: Marie Antoinette | Speaker: Marie Antoinette
"Match me, Sidney."Source: Sweet Smell of Success | Speaker: J.J. Hunsecker
"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Speaker: Reverend Sykes
"Nip it in the bud!"Source: The Andy Griffith Show | Speaker: Barney Fife
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."Source: The annual convention of the California State Suffrage Association | Speaker: Susan B. Anthony
"Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople."Source: Istanbul (Not Constantinople) | Speaker: They Might Be Giants
"Of course he has a knife. He always has a knife."Source: The Lion in Winter | Speaker: Eleanor of Aquitaine
"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."Source: Speech to the 23rd Republican National Convention (June 1944) | Speaker: Herbert Hoover
"On Wednesdays, we wear pink."Source: Mean Girls | Speaker: Karen Smith
"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."Source: Brave New World | Author: Aldous Huxley
"Our long national nightmare is over."Source: Inaugural Address, September 9, 1974 | Speaker: President Gerald Ford
"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."Source: Sympathy for the Devil | Speaker: The Rolling Stones
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Source: Problems of War and Strategy | Speaker: Mao Zedong
"Politics is the art of the possible."Source: St. Petersburgische Zeitung | Author: Prince Otto von Bismarck
"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."Source: 1988 Vice Presidential Debate | Speaker: Lloyd Bentsen
"She doesn't even go here."Source: Mean Girls | Speaker: Damian Leigh
"Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe…"Source: Lawrence of Arabia | Speaker: T.E. Lawrence
"Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours."Source: Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours | Speaker: Stevie Wonder
"So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."Source: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith | Speaker: Senator Padmé Amidala
"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The best thing about human beings is that they stack so neatly."Source: House of Cards | Speaker: Frank Underwood
"The cold never bothered me anyway."Source: Frozen | Speaker: Elsa
"The gift of a good liar is making people believe you lack a talent for lying."Source: House of Cards | Speaker: Frank Underwood
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."Source: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | Speaker: Spock
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."Source: FDR's Inauguration Speech | Speaker: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"The only winning move is not to play."Source: WarGames | Speaker: Joshua
"The President—whoever he is—has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody."Source: Farewell Address (1953) | Speaker: Harry S. Truman
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe! You have to make it fall."Source: Libération | Speaker: Che Guevara
"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it."Source: The Second Treatise on Civil Government | Author: John Locke
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"There is no such thing [as society]!"Source: Interview with Woman's Own magazine in 1987 | Speaker: Margaret Thatcher
"This is Halloween!"Source: This Is Halloween | Speaker: Citizens of Halloween Town
"This is the people's war!"Source: Mrs. Miniver | Speaker: The Vicar
"This whole court's out of order!"Source: …And Justice for All | Speaker: Arthur Kirkland
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"War—huh yeah—what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"Source: War | Speaker: Edwin Starr
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us."Source: Speech at the Audubon Ballroom | Speaker: Malcolm X
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us."Source: Malcolm X | Speaker: Malcolm X (played by Denzel Washington)
"We have met the enemy and they are ours."Source: Letter to William Henry Harrison | Author: Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
"We must guard against […] unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."Source: Eisenhower's Farewell Address | Speaker: Dwight Eisenhower
"We shall never surrender."Source: We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech (June 1940) | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"When in the course of human events…"Source: Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"You must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it."Source: Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer | Author: Ogden Nash
"You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked."Source: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | Speaker: Jefferson Smith
"You're the sanest man that ever walked into this courtroom."Source: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town | Speaker: Judge May