Ogden Nash Quotes

Secrecy is the foundation of politics.

This is politics. In politics, you only show the cake but not the ingredients. The time will come when I show you the cake and the ingredients.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

I resent any secret plan that I'm not a part of.

Whenever they tell you there's no change in policy, that's the surest sign that something's up.

Politics—where they pat you on the back so they'll know where to stick the knife.

If he is reelected, I can keep him in ignorance of my affairs.

The difference between a horse race and a political race is that in a horse race the whole horse runs.

Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.

Truth is a very powerful political weapon against those who are trying to conceal it.

Politics: a Trojan horse race

In Indian politics, deception seems a byword. I'll have none of that.

Those who were behind conspiracies against me and my government will be exposed.

In my experience in Washington, when people refuse to come clean, it is usually because they are hiding dirty laundry.

And these are your reasons, my lord?" "Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent." Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.

Many a politician wishes there was a law to burn old records.

Is there anyone... who will maintain that the Party System could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

Elections in L.A. are so different. Here you've got politicians with phony smiles making false promises to voters with fake boobs and bad toupees.

Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.

But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.

Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.

They (voters) want to know what's the truth. They're not interested in a chameleon.