Herve Alphand Quotes

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don't. I'm in the second category, that's all.

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

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

It’s a graveyard for politics. I see this as the end of my political future

I had dreams of high political office.

It was fascinating what a total interest he [John F. Kennedy] had in his tradecraft of being a politician. I didn't realize before that he was working on his memoirs all along, how he ran for Congress, that sort of thing.

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

Every one must be familiar with the often expressed opinion, that, as a practical politician, Mr. Mill's career was essentially a failure.

Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.

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.

I am not in politics. 'President Mutombo?' No, no, no. There has never been a politician in my family, and I am not going to try to be the first one.

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

The beginning of my political career was not promising. I ran for junior class president at Shortridge High school and was runner up. I ran again in the senior year with the same result. But opportunity came ironically, or fortunately, when I returned to Indianapolis after serving in the Navy.

People who assume I want to run for elected office may be dealing from a bad assumption.

I would be lying if I told you that I hadn't had aspirations to run for a statewide office.

I do not rule out the possibility of being prime minister of India one day, but there is still time.

You don't go into politics unless you want to win.

Appearances are not truth. But every politician knows that his or her image, as well as his or her actions, can make the difference between failure and success.

I am not at all a politician. I don't think I'm cut out for politics. I am certainly not going to stand for election.

In Washington, success is just a training course for failure.

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.

I have got everything which a politician needs.

Jason McDermott's political career, however bogus, appears to have had an early and promising start.

Ralph Reed is deeply ambitious and always was so. There was a time when he... in one of my interviews, he said he pondered running the Ross Perot campaign, and he wasn't sure he wanted to do the Christian Right thing; he was worried that it boxed him into a corner.