Michael Foot Quotes

I say this in the utmost affection ... he has passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.

You know, a statesman is a dead politician.

You don’t become a statesman unless you are first a good politician.

A politician before he can become a statesman has to remain in office long enough.

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.

It's a sad thing about politics that most people get power too late, in that they differ from ladies of easy virtue who get their pleasures too early.

I don't think at my age... you can start ruling people out in politics.

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

It's interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done.

People who know Paul Ryan say, 'He will be president one day.'

I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

Now I have known Sen. Bill Frist, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, since he was born.

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them.

First and foremost, when I think of him - I'm prejudiced; I worked for the guy for six and a half years - when I think of him, I think of him first and foremost as an idea politician.

Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.

A statesman is a politician who’s been dead ten or fifteen years.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan [is] easily the most original thinker in the Senate.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him, he is a statesman.

The general impression of course is that you would be most foolish to take the Vice Presidency .... if I were a candidate for the Presidency, I would take the Vice Presidency in a minute at this juncture. My belief in your taking it arises from my conviction that it is the true stepping-stone for you .... The Vice Presidency is the better path to better and more important things.

I am afraid that Franklin D. Roosevelt has not thoroughly matured.

Men in political life must be ambitious.

When I was a young man, I used to dream maybe someday I could be an alderman. Instead of that I became an attorney general, a senator, a vice president, a Democratic nominee.

It is time for Hillary Clinton to permanently retire.

I think Senator Marco Rubio was a very good speaker of the House, has been a very good senator.