John McCain Quotes

Sometimes, political campaigns make decent people act and talk like perfect buffoons.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself.

Promise all that is asked and more if you can think of anything. Offer to build a bridge or a church, to divide a county, create a batch of new offices, make a turnpike, or anything they like. Promises cost nothing, therefore deny nobody who has a vote.

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.

No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them -- campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again.

I haven't been in Washington long, but I have learned that it is a place filled with people who say one thing to get elected and do the opposite once they get there.

I'm not going to be one of those guys who changes, and all of a sudden I'm shaking hands and kissing babies.

I hate to rain on anyone's parade or burst the enthusiasm bubble, but talk is especially cheap during an election season.

Ah, political physics. Someone wins an election and, poof, they are a candidate for vice president. Ridiculous.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

To me, politics is a pile of tricks.

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.

When people see political ads, they think someone's lying to them.

Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

What's important is promising something to the people, not actually keeping those promises. The people have always lived on hope alone.

The permanent campaign is inherently deceptive.

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power are.

When people campaign for positions, they promise people all kinds of things.

I can talk a lot and not reveal anything; I would make a great politician.

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That's the only way you can get elected.

A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

To cover politics in Washington allows you to live in the very, very wide gap between what the actual truth is, and how people are trying to manipulate the truth. They speak in the language of spin, obsequiousness, obfuscation. The meta of politics is just this endless source of material that can shed light on the psychology of the process.

There is a temptation in politics to look for simplistic slogans and to play the game in a way that looks like you're a savvy politician.