John Adams Quotes

All political questions, all matters of right, are at bottom only questions of might.

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.

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

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

I am not entering politics to be another Knesset member. If I enter the political arena I want to be prime minister. Period.

If I was into politics, I would be rich.

He took pride in belonging to the world's most exclusive club: the United States Senate.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

People like to do politics with me, and they like to do business.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

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

…the Senate, a small body of egos…

Pride, envy, avarice—these sparks Have set on fire the hearts of all men.

I have the disease called politics.

Don't get mad. Don't get even. Get elected.

Politics, as an end in itself, is a poor business to be in.

In the final analysis, politics is a game of force, in which no weakling may expect to be assigned a conspicuous role.

Anyone who gets to the top in politics is a control freak.

Territorial Governors -- are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in order to build up stakes and come back as United States Senators.

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

It's incredibly flattering to be a U.S. senator, which I want to stay at for a long time.

I have no political aspiration.

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.

Sarah Palin has managed to use her failed vice presidential run to put herself in a position of power and influence. Joe Biden won the race and he hasn't been able to put himself in a position of power and influence.