Charles Kennedy Quotes

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

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

A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

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

Obama might do well to remember that his fast rise from the Illinois state Senate was due in large part to an uncanny ability to make friends and find mentors.

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

Gabby Giffords was a mentor of mine in the state Legislature and also in Congress.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You can't be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have never been shy about how important Ferran Adria has been in my life; he is a friend, a mentor, an inspiration.

Statesmanship is harder than politics. Politics is the art of getting along with people, whereas statesmanship is the art of getting along with politicians.

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.

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.

We all know the personal relationship between Michel Platini and President Blatter. It was like a mentor and protege, or even father and son.

Had Calhoun been advised by me, he would have been the most popular man in the United States.

No doubt it was better to have become president than not.

The most brilliant statesman who ever lived, possessing the loftiest and keenest intellect of his time.

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

I believe that [Bill] Clinton is the best tactical politician, certainly in my lifetime.

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

Rayburn was one of the most powerful men in national life. If he were not from Texas, he could have been President … He was a powerhouse!

Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics because he understood human nature.

Donald Trump is a friend.

Hamilton is my favorite political entrepreneur.