John Quincy Adams Quotes

The Republicans learned well from Bill Clinton.

The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.

Sometimes political parties have a very short window to influence public policy

Democrats are not a national party. They have lost governorships, state legislatures, mayoralties. They have lost 1,500 seats since elections, 2010, '12, '14, it's been devastating. And it's all Obama.

Like a cowboy saddling a bucking stallion, Republican leaders tried to tame the Tea Party while riding it to victories.

It is necessary to take an active part in politics to observe how often the welfare of the party organization is put before the issues, even before the welfare of the commonwealth.

The voice of the Republican party is up for grabs. It's a contest right now.

Political parties exist to get bums on seats.

The Republican Party would be really smart to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible.

War is party-blind. It doesn't care who is in the Oval Office. The forces that drive us to war don't care whether it's Republican, Democrat, or other. The fact is, these parties are prey to special interests. That is something Eisenhower was afraid of.

I've been a political junkie for a long time. I find the way Washington works is just fascinating to me.

I hesitated, too, because for better or worse, I have been one of the principal architects of New Labour and I have worked closely with Tony Blair and the team for nearly 20 years.

Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies.

The way to help this country is to limit Republican power.

In an election year the state of the nation is the state of politics.

Republicans are the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party of the people.

Politics. Where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be a candidate themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

... the persons who control the President's rhetoric exert an enormous influence over his actions and policies.

For the politician the goal is always to be in the government.... Everything is about the struggle for office. The purpose of power, the problem to solve, is forgotten.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him, he is a statesman.

In the United States, it is easier to take over a party than to start a party.

Major parties have lived more for patronage than principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in power, to arrange sufficiently satisfactory compromises of interest to remain there.

Presidents tend to promote policies with grand nationalizing themes, whereas Congress is more at home with shapeless compromises agreeable to interest groups and geographic constituencies.

Democracy is interpreted by everyone according to the party principles which he avows.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.