Great political putdowns/zingers

Say it slowly. “I’m a Country member” … “I’m a c**t, remember …”

I got these from ‘Quotations for our time’:

‘Politics has got so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to get beat’ - Will Rogers

‘Greater love hath no man than this - that he lay down his friends for his life’ - Jeremy Thorpe (about Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sacking 7 cabinet members)

‘There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries for dinner’ - H. L. Mencken

‘An elected official is one who gets 51% of the vote cast by 40% of the 60% of voters who registered’ - Dan Bennett

‘A political war is one in which everyone shoots from the lip’ - Raymond Moley

‘Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other’ Oscar Ameringer

‘My opponent resembles Lincoln - a short, fat, dishonest Lincoln!’

‘An honest politican is one who will stay bought’ Simon Cameron

‘I’m not leftist - I’m where the righteous ought to be’ M. Coady

‘He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything - that points to a political career’ George Bernard Shaw

‘Voters quickly forget what a man says’ Richard Nixon

I’m having a Star Trek: Undiscovered Country flashback!

Dorothy Parker on being told that “Silent Cal” Coolidge was dead: How can they tell?

It’s not a Australian thing.

Say it slow and draw out each syllable. Then read the response.

Apparently he never said, but I’ve always like the quote attributed to Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

I think this incident has the best political wordplay ever.

During one of Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaigns, he was to speak at a Houston Baptist convention. He was introduced with the remarks that he had been invited “just as a courtesy, because Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has already instructed us to vote for your opponent.” Stevenson stepped to the microphone and opened his speech with “Well, speaking as a Christian, I would like to say that I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.”

(apocryphal)
A woman to Adlai Stevenson: “You have the vote of every thinking person!”
Stevenson: “That’s not enough, madam; we need a majority.”

Eve is gonna come back and kick your ass…

This “quote” is made up. Never happened.

I told him that, back up in post #41 and some hours before. Ya mean, he still hasn’t got it?

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“It’s good to be hated by the right people.” --Johnny Cash

“Don’t get mad. Don’t get even. Just get elected, then get even.” --James Carville

Never know.

I still haven’t got that I could be beat to the punch that quickly.

Sorry, Wolf. Missed your post.

No worries. I only got in first because I was doing an all-nighter stuffing envelopes. :slight_smile: Between the two of us, I reckon we’ve explained the subtleties of the line well enough. :wink:

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Well, someone better tell the editors of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. (1993 edition)

This site supports the claim. How does one go about disproving an attribution?

Yes, I just looked it up and see that you’re right. My memory was off.

Also attributed to Churchill, I just found:

“He [Stanley Baldwin] occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”

“A sheep in sheep’s clothing.” (also about Attlee)

“Who is this man whose name is neither one thing nor the other?” (of Alfred Bossom)

“There but for the grace of God, goes God.” (of Stafford Cripps)

“As far as I can see you have used every cliche except ‘God is Love’ and ‘Please adjust your dress before leaving.’” (responding to a report by Anthony Eden)

And Lincoln, when accused of being two-faced, said, “If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one?”

The way you do it is to contact the The Dirksen Center and then search for the quote (bottom, right “a billion here, a billion there…” and read. They haven’t found it and they have access to almost all things Dirksen. He still could have said it, but even with electronic searching of millions of newspaper pages, books, etc., no one has ever found it.

Fred Shapiro has found the earliest(so far) similar quote, from the NYTimes, 10 Jan. 1938