Quintus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Nothing is irreparable in politics.

Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.

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

In 59 years I haven’t had to reinvent myself once.

Politicians trim and tack in their quest for power, but they do so in order to get the wind of votes in their sails.

I would despise myself if I thought that I was procuring your votes by concealing my opinions, and by avowing one set of principles in one part of the state and a different set in another.

I allow the public to believe that I have more influence with the King than I do in reality.

Nixon's pretense was to be less than he was—less thoughtful, less introverted, less skeptical and analytical, less cerebral—to present himself deliberately as an Average American: patriotic, conventionally religious and responsible, gregarious, sports-loving, hardworking and hard-nosed.

You should not make specific pledges either to the Senate or to the People. Stick to vague generalities.

You don't need to fool all of the people all of the time. You only need to fool the majority of the people once every four years or so.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. That’s usually enough.

Politics is the business of managing perceptions.

Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks.

A man’s natural manner best becomes him.

Persistence in one opinion has never been considered a merit in political leaders.

[Politics in America is:] A chess tournament disguised as a circus.

Politics is an impressionistic art form.

Be a hypocrite if you like, but don't talk like one.

The camera cannot lie. But it can be an accessory to untruth.

It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a great hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes.

Set of Vipers

It often happens that people when they visit a number of candidates, and observe the one that pays special heed to their attentions, leave off visiting the others, and little by little become real supporters of this man.

[Politicians and political party] leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandizement, become many of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers.

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.

The politician has to try to appeal to everybody. So, consequently, he cannot tell the truth, because if he tells the truth over there, then these people over here will be offended.