Felix Frankfurter Quotes

People may have their opinions about Senator Helms, but he was highly effective and he took care of his constituency. I learned all those lessons from him, and I bring a great deal to the table because of that.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

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

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.

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

I have covered Pelosi for years, and always wondered how she learned to operate and excel in politics the way she does.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

Politicians are wither very good at running for office or they are good at running government. Seldom are the two found together.

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

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

A great politician has to bother himself less with means than with goals.

Politics is ultimately not that complicated a profession; it's where the mediocre distinguish themselves.

I got to be White House chief of staff, ten years of congressman, secretary of defense, vice-president. If you're a political junkie like I obviously am - that was - every one of those was just a tremendous experience. I'm very comfortable with what I did and why I did it and how I did it. And I'll let others judge whether they liked it or not.

It's interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done.

President Obama is one of the great political knife-fighters in modern history. He is a failed president - his economy is bleak, his foreign policy bleaker, his vision for American even bleaker still. But he wins.

The difference between the men and the boys in politics is, and always has been, that the boys want to be something, while the men want to do something.

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them.

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It's authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys.

If, however, the success of a politician is to be measured by the degree in which he is able personally to influence the course of politics, and attach to himself a school of political thought, then Mr. Mill, in the best meaning of the words, has succeeded.

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.

The Republicans learned well from Bill Clinton.

The fastest way for a politician to become an elder statesman is to lose an election.

He has the best political mind of all the generals I have.

To tell the truth, I'm more comfortable now that the amateurs are back in charge [of the White House].

Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.