When the political columnists say "Every thinking man" they mean themselves, and when the candidates appeal to "Every intelligent voter" they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

Politics cannot stop to study psychology Its methods are rough; its judgments rougher still.

Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.

Late into the [1944 election] night, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey still had not sent the usual polite message of congratulation to the winner. And so Roosevelt finally went upstairs to bed, riding up in the small elevator originally installed in the [Hyde Park] house to carry the family's trunks up and down. He said of Dewey, "He's still a son of a bitch."

Nowhere are prejudices more mistaken for truth, passion for reason, and invective for documentation than in politics. That is a realm, peopled only by villains or heroes, in which everything is black or white and gray is a forbidden color.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.

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

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

In politics as in religion, it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those that deny the whole of it.