Political Double Speak Quotes

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

Sometimes in politics “yes” means “maybe” and “no” means “if.”

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.

But, you know, when I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that no, this was a terrorist attack, and then tells everybody else that it was a video. Where I came from, they call that a lie.

The “cant” of the politician, like the cant of the “religious” man, is also protean in its guise, but its chief method is to explain away words. The politician can always show you that he didn’t mean what he says, but something rather different from what he says. Political cant consists in pretending to agreement with hearers, whoever they may be. This cant is part of the stock-in-trade of every politician, be he Tory, Whig, or Radical, and it is by its means that he tries to haul in stray votes.

When a politician uses the word 'folks,' we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

We never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.