115 Political Opponents Quotes

Following is our list of political opponents quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about political game.

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Famous Political Opponents Quotes

Those who are opposed to armed uprising ... must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards. — Vladimir Lenin

There are no true friends in politics. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Every nation has its war party... It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. — Robert M. La Follette

Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected. — Thomas Sowell

The enemies you make by taking a decided stand generally have more respect for you than the friends you make by being on the fence — Henry A. Kissinger

The enemies of the country and of freedom of the people have always denounced as bandits those who sacrifice themselves for the noble causes of the people. — Emiliano Zapata

Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. — Alexander Hamilton

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends. - Joseph Conrad

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends. — Joseph Conrad

Traitors are hated even by those whom they prefer. — Tacitus

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman. — David Lloyd George

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary. — Albert Camus

The party of swindlers and thieves is putting forward its chief swindler and its chief thief for the presidency. We must vote against him, struggle against him. — Alexei Navalny

We pledge to fight the dark forces high in the counsels of the Republican Party which have made political capital out of the techniques of character assassination by innuendo. — Emanuel Celler

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt — Graham Greene

Too often character assassination has replaced debate in principle here in Washington. Destroy someone's reputation, and you don't have to talk about what he stands for. — Ronald Reagan

Short Political Opponents Quotes

  • One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship. — Milton Friedman
  • We had the opposition of virtually the entire Democratic leadership in every state in this country. — Bernie Sanders
  • If you have no enemies, you have no character. Taking a stand always creates opposition. — Paul Newman
  • A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. — Oscar Wilde
  • Everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel. — George III

Political Opponents Image Quotes

Political opponents quote When words are both true and kind they can change the world.
When words are both true and kind they can change the world.

Political Game Quotes

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. — Charles R. Swindoll

I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself. — Jesse Owens

Politics is not a baseball game with winners or losers. What politics is about is whether we protect the needs of millions of people in this country who are hurting. — Bernie Sanders

Political opponents quote Be gentle with yourself, you're doing the best you can.
Be gentle with yourself, you're doing the best you can.

School, politics, sports, and games train us to compete against others. True rewards – wealth, knowledge, love, fitness, and equanimity – come from ignoring others and improving ourselves. — Naval Ravikant

School, politics, sports, and games train us to compete against others. — Naval Ravikant

I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants, and political manifestoes; I enjoy driving from coast to coast, good food and drink, a few friends, dogs, the theatre, long walks, music and free conversation. — James Hilton

Political opponents quote Be the person your dog thinks you are.
Be the person your dog thinks you are.

If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game. — Joe Biden

The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall, your elbows high, and a smile on your face. It's a survival game played under the glare of lights. — Jean Chretien

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare. — John Major

The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews. — Sandy Koufax

Political Enemy Quotes

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas. — Joseph Stalin

We have no eternal allies, and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. — Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. — Abraham Lincoln

Political opponents quote There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. — George W. Bush

A polite enemy is just as difficult to discredit, as a rude friend is to protect. — Bryant H. McGill

If Scott Walker sees 100,000 teachers & firefighters as his enemies, maybe it's time we take a closer look at his friends. — Elizabeth Warren

Political opponents quote Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.
Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.

Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture. — Charles Colson

It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. — Carl Schmitt

The poor ignorant fellah [Arabic for peasant] does not worry about politics, but when he is told repeatedly by people in whom he has confidence that his livelihood is in danger of being taken away from him by us, he becomes our mortal enemy. . . The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told. — Chaim Weizmann

Political Winning Quotes

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning. — Warren Buffett

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power. — Robert H. Jackson

Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. — Paul Wellstone

Political opponents quote The stronger you become, the gentler you will be.
The stronger you become, the gentler you will be.

Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes. — John Podhoretz

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. — Ayn Rand

Men who have changed the world never achieved their success by winning the chief citizens to their side, but always by stirring the masses. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Political opponents quote Being polite is so rare these days, thats its often confused with flirting.
Being polite is so rare these days, thats its often confused with flirting.

My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics. — David Miliband

I've been watching politics for 35 or 40 years and you just never know. You can have one person win the Iowa caucus and then the whole picture changes ten minutes later. The same thing can happen again after New Hampshire. I have no idea what's going to happen with our country in the future. — Jackie Mason

Much as I would have liked to respond factually and truthfully to each and every piece of misinformation spread by the Brexit campaign, it was important that I stayed out of the domestic political debate. It was David Cameron's task to win the UK referendum, not ours. — Jean-Claude Juncker

Revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society, and without them it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. — Mao Zedong

Political Enemies Quotes

Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God. — Goldwin Smith

The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. — H. L. Mencken

These are the strategic dialectics of anti-imperialist struggle: through the defensive reactions of the system, the escalation of counterrevolution, the transformation of the political martial law into military martial law, the enemy betrays himself, becomes visible. — Ulrike Meinhof

Political opponents quote Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you - not because they are nice, ut becau
Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you - not because they are nice, ut because you are.

Diplomacy means the art of nearly deceiving all your friends, but not quite deceiving all your enemies. — Kofi Abrefa Busia

For a politics of emancipation, the enemy that is to be feared most is not repression at the hands of the established order. It is the interiority of nihilism, and the unbounded cruelty that can come with its emptiness. — Alain Badiou

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. — George Orwell

Political opponents quote Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.
Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.

The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy. — John Jay Chapman

I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you. — Ann Richards

I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -more evil or as evil as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet communists we fought during the long Cold War. — Joe Lieberman

Treat your enemies with courtesy, and you'll see how valuable it really is. It costs little but pays a nice dividend: those who honor are honored. Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing. — Baltasar Gracian

Political Opposition Quotes

There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution. — John Adams

When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when antiracism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other and both interests lose. — Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

My political position springs from my being a novelist. In so far as I am concerned, politics and the novel are an indivisible case and I can categorically state that I became politically committed because I am a novelist, not the opposite. — Ghassan Kanafani

Political opponents quote Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician and I'll show you a crook.
Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician and I'll show you a crook.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. — Leon Trotsky

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The U.K. needs a strong opposition, and Labour shows no signs of being capable of being that. The SNP is filling that void and will go on seeking to do that. — Nicola Sturgeon

Political opponents quote Politeness and courteousness are a small price to pay for the goodwill of others.
Politeness and courteousness are a small price to pay for the goodwill of others.

I came into politics because of my opposition to what a Tory Government was doing to the community I grew up in. — Nicola Sturgeon

I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. — Millard Fillmore

Politics and merit are opposite ends of a spectrum. More political organizations are less productive, have less inequality, and top performers opt out. More merit-based organizations have higher productivity, more inequality, and higher odds of internal fracture. — Naval Ravikant

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. — Arundhati Roy

People Writing About Political Opponents

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Read quotes by Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin
quotes on communism, education and capitalism

244 4384
Read quotes by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero
quotes on law

1036 10824
Read quotes by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell
quotes on truth, intellectuals and liberals

591 7260
Read quotes by Henry A. Kissinger

Henry A. Kissinger
quotes on america, power and america friend

267 1222
Read quotes by Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata

14 950
Read quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton
quotes on education, federalism and tyranny

362 9118

More Political Opponents Quotes

Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you. — Mark Twain

Politics is like boxing - you try to knock out your opponents. — Idi Amin

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan

In today’s politics, if you forget that your perception of reality has probably been at least a little manipulated, and your opponents are behaving the way they are based on a perception of reality that’s different from your own — you’re bound to get things wrong. — Tim Urban

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents. — Winston Churchill

Know how to play the card of contempt. It is the most politic kind of revenge. For there are many of whom we should have known nothing if their distinguished opponents had taken no notice of them. There is no revenge like oblivion, for it is the entombment of the unworthy in the dust of their own nothingness. — Baltasar Gracian

Primarily affecting low-information voters and members of the mainstream media, Obama Worship Syndrome attributes impossible capabilities to Obama's political opponents, finds excuses for every Obama failure in everyone around him and praises the president as the finest politician - nay, human being - of our time. — Ben Shapiro

The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt. — Konrad Adenauer

Often dismissed or underestimated by political opponents, President Reagan had the most valuable weapon in the political arsenal: a bond with the people. — William L. Jenkins

I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war. — Bayard Rustin

Any time an elected official in the world we're in today that appears so dysfunctional challenges a core constituency not of their opponent but of their own political base, I think we should pause and give them credit. — Jeb Bush

If supporters of equality for women want to vote for the best candidate, they must look to a person regardless of gender and must disregard the gender of political opponents. — Karen DeCrow

I understand the harsh feelings and sentiments from my opponents and their supporters because I myself have been defeated twice in my political life in the past and I understand very well it is hard to accept your own failure. — Chen Shui-bian

Nothing drives your opponents more crazy than being utterly reasonable. And nothing makes demonizing or delegitimizing your opponents easier than letting them shriek unreasonable things for you. The Republicans need to get back to being the party that elicits unreasonable shrieking from their opponents. Not the other way around. — Jonah Goldberg

We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison. — Vladimir Lenin

Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than the opponents. But if you're looking for morals in politics you're looking for bananas in the cheese department. — Harry Shearer

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself. — Herbert Hoover

I see it all the time in politics. If a candidate gets caught in a lie, he quickly tries to change the subject by throwing more mud at his opponent. The mud keeps flying until some of the slanderous material sticks. — Joe Scarborough

I still believe the Lewinsky investigation was way off from the focus of what Whitewater was, which turned out to be nothing at the end of the process. And I think that there were people who were determined as political opponents to not allow his presidency to succeed. — Rahm Emanuel

You just work really hard and scrutinize. What is it called in politics? "Opposition research"? You want to do the detective work on your client so to speak before your opponent can dig it up. We're vetting everything thoroughly. — James Ponsoldt

To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles. — Jean Francois Revel

Listen, Al Gore is a very tough opponent. He is the incumbent. He represents the incumbency. And a challenger is somebody who generally comes from the pack and wins, if you're going to win. And that's where I'm coming from. — George W. Bush

Liberals and conservatives are opponents in the most literal sense, each using the myth of pure evil to demonize the other side and unite there own. — Jonathan Haidt

Ward Churchill might be more valuable to the opponents of the academic left employed than unemployed. Above all, he can serve as a living window into the intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of the left. — Mort Kondracke

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states. — Herbert Croly

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman's industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman. — Percy Wynham Lewis

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones. — Alasdair Chalmers Macintyre

I dealt with people with diverse political views. If you find people who are your political opponents, and talk to them for an hour, chances are you're going to like them, and they're not full of hate. — Cass Sunstein

True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents at home. The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history. — Barack Obama

The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution. — Michael Parenti

Philosophy is not politics, and we do our best, within our all-too-human limitations, to seek the truth, not to score points against opponents. There is little satisfaction in gaining an easy triumph over a weak opponent while ignoring better arguments against your views. — Peter Singer

If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman's industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman. — Wyndham Lewis

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones. — Alasdair MacIntyre

It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. — Tom DeLay

Mudslinging - In politics, anything bad the opponent says about our candidate; in contrast, when our candidate does this, it is called 'making a good point. — Richard Turner

When dealing with Canadians, it is advantageous to seem to be negotiating from a position of weakness, for when faced with an abject opponent, they become concession-happy and will accede to almost anything. — Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens

Tact, the kind of tact you should cultivate, is not a form of deception or make-believe, but a cultivated taste which gives fine perception in seeing and doing what is best under all circumstances. There is nothing which will so readily bring you into favor, or disarm an opponent, as the right use of tact. — Grenville Kleiser

Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents. — David Frum

It's not so much about the cause, it's about feeling superior to political opponents. — Glenn Reynolds

The Sangh Parivar, against which I had been waging a war, misled the people. My opponents used the Election Commission and the bureaucracy to win a political battle. — Lalu Prasad Yadav

Never quit politicking and never underestimate your opponent. — Gus Franklin Mutscher

Those of us and so many other stalwart critics and opponents and questioners and dissidents in conservative media were attacked for doing what those people in the mainstream media should have been doing. Do your job! Subject these political candidates to the same amount of scrutiny that you are now trying to compensate for with the incoming Trump administration! — Michelle Malkin

Well, human rights defenders, freedom of speech advocates, lawyers that we spoke to said this is really an expansion. After the military ouster of Egypt's unpopular, but elected Islamist president in 2013, we saw political opponents being arrested by the thousands, really. Then we saw a popular comedian go off the air out of fear of retribution. — Leila Fadel

...associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents. — Jonah Goldberg

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