Gary Herbert Quotes

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

As a rule, one should never place form over content.

All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.

He warns the heads of parties against believing their own lies

If a politician, during a campaign, finds it necessary to resort to flattery, he should spread it on, not in thin layers, but with a trowel, or better yet, a shovel.

The man [President Woodrow Wilson] has no sense of things that penetrates below the surface. With him the rhetoric of a thing is the thing itself.

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

A typical vice of American politics — the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.

So much emotion is invested in symbols as opposed to substance.

Political discourse has been reduced to "Where's the beef?" "Read my lips," and "Make my day." Where are the assassins when we really need them?

Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.

Oh that thou hadst like others been all words, And no performance.

Without meaning, without substance, without aim: a mere 'public opinion'.

And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

PLAIN SUPERFICIALITY is the character of a speech, in which any two points being taken, the speaker is found to lie wholly with regard to those two points.

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.

The one profession where you can gain great eminence without ever being right.

Politicians love change, but of details only.

Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.

For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.

The only value of ideology is to stop things becoming showbiz.

Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.

A great many political speeches are literary parricides; they kill their fathers.