ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record. - Ambrose Bierce
POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When we wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive. - Ambrose Bierce
Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. - Erich Fromm
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. - James Clarke
You can always get truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy or given up hope of the Presidency. - Wendell Phillips
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar. - Friedrich Nietzsche
AGITATOR, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors -- to dislodge the worms. - Ambrose Bierce
If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name. - Theodore Roosevelt
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right. - William Butler Yeats
The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation. - James Freeman Clarke
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."[The New Statesman, February 25, 1933] - Cyril Connolly
Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen. - Bob Edwards
Conservative. noun. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. - Ambrose Bierce
A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.
presidents, when not outright telling lies, feel obliged to shade the truth most of the time. This is called politics; when a president lies successfully, he is called a statesman. - Gore Vidal
A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson