Mark Shriver Quotes

It was flattering to have high expectations, but I was never going to be President.

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics, is still the greatest and most honorable adventure.

I could be like Joe Kennedy and say, 'My kids are going to run for president!'

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.

I'm inclined to think that, because it's such an awful life, that politicians do go into it for the best reasons. I mean, some may love the sound of their own voice. But it's such a wearying life, you've got to be impelled by some desire to leave the world a better place than when you came into it.

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator - just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.

I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.

Presidential aspirants reach for the highest office to satisfy some yearning for greatness or even immortality.

I don't have to run the Peace Corps. I could live without seeing my picture in the newspapers and without being interviewed.

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Carlos Fuentes in Mexico - but I knew that many of them had failed, and in any event, I wasn't exactly in their league.

There is absolutely no way that I would enter that world. I would never run for office.

Ambition characterizes and distinguishes national officeholders from other kinds of human beings.

Men who have greatness within them don't go into politics.

Men in political life must be ambitious.

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don’t go far in politics.

There are a lot of people who go to Washington or go to their state houses with a personal ambition in mind.

So far, I have not come to any of the positions that I have filled through wanting to be there. I was sought - people wanted me to come to those posts. I am talking about all my positions: mayor of Istanbul, chairman of the party, prime minister.

The traditional path to making a name for yourself in our family is running for elective office, and I couldn't do that because, for one thing, all the really good offices were taken.

You have to be either naive or power-hungry to get into politics. I wouldn't consider it myself. I am too well-informed.

You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.

Now you may do it badly, you may do it well, some people like you, some people hate you, all the rest of it - but you have got a real motivating life purpose. [on being Prime Minister

I decided that I was going to be the Kennedy who makes her own name and finds her own job and works like a dog. My comeuppance was when Arnold got elected - I became the Kennedy who was married to the governor.

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

I think that if politics is just about getting your backside on important seats, then it's a pretty worthless endeavor.