Political Insight Quotes

George Bush looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul in the first meeting he had in Slovenia. And then in the next meeting, he realized his soul was very dark.

I'm a big fan of political editor Allegra Stratton.

I would say that I am an academic in politics. I have never abandoned my academic approach to observe reality, independently from the subject and its constant changes.

The importance of building relationships among colleagues, of trying to create coalitions behind the issues that you are championing, was not something I ever had much insight into until I was elected and started serving in the Senate.

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that he read the nation and the world better than his rivals.

The ability to change one's views without losing one's seat is the mark of a great politician.

Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls - before the public even knows to call them 'issues' at all.

I think it's true that Mike Pence, having been a politician for much longer than President Trump, certainly has a measured way of answering questions.

To listen to the interests of all marks an ordinary government; to foresee them marks a great government.

Being right too early is one of the most devastating things in politics

I have never dealt with people who have so little political sagacity as the Turks.

The heart of a statesman should be in his head.

Hitler is living on the empty stomach of Germany …. Better political insight has a hard time winning as long as there is little prospect of filling the stomach.

Folks, I can tell you I've known eight presidents, three of them intimately.

Now, for this book I had to learn the world of the Senate, which is really for all that's written about the Senate, an unknowing world and its mores, and the way things work with subcommittees and all. I loved learning about that.

I've been described as a grizzled political veteran.

Donald Trump proved that he understood America in the way that those who say they're informing America simply did not.

I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw some conclusions from it.

This legislation is in the President's interest, if only the President could be brought to see it.

Having studied politics doesn't necessarily give you political nous.

Many pundits today are in the habit of misquoting Santayana's epigram, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Maybe some people have come to grief this way, but they are probably fewer than those who have fallen into the opposite error. One is apt to perish in politics from too much memory, Tocqueville wrote somewhere, with equal truth and greater insight.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

There is no way I could discuss things with Jimmy in an intelligent way if I didn’t attend cabinet meetings

At a time when politics has become an almost minute-by-minute spectacle, political thinkers who try to discern a sweeping interpretive pattern in current events or to predict where those events may be heading are likely to find their work evaluated in terms dismayingly like those applied to candidates and strategists. One wrong guess, or an abrupt change in the political weather, can make even an illuminating political book seem as irrelevant as a bungled campaign.

Voters are not great at reading issues. They are great at reading character.