Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Politics is as much a regular business as the grocery or the dry-goods or the drug business. You've got to be trained up to it or you're sure to fail. <small>p. 19</small>

In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

...Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.

The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.

But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way....

Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty— their power and privilege— to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians.

Politics is the way we see anything in this world, the way we look at women is our politics, the way we look at minorities is politics, the way we look at people living on the fringes of society is politics, the way we look at the people in power is politics which has to come through.

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

Women in politics are still women. We can laugh and be joyful and still be in politics. We do not want to be like men, we want to be ourselves and still engage effectively in politics

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Politics is the activity by which the framework of human life is sustained; it is not life itself.