Political consultants are pugilists masters in the dark art of negativity. Which is why it's surprising to hear Democrats such as Steve McMahon and Republicans like Rich Galen urging their presidential candidates to be more well positive.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e. 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

'Yes' is a far more potent word than 'no' in American politics. By adopting the positions which animate the political agenda for the other side one can disarm them and leave them sputtering with nothing to say.

Living in Washington you can't take politics too seriously. I draw the line at honesty. I have no time for political hacks who say things they don't believe because they get paid to.

For us sons of France political sentiment is a passion while for the Englishmen politics are a question of business.

On the other side I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.

So my degree was in political science which I think was - the closest I could come to marketing is politics.

Politics is politics art is art. If you play a political role you have to stop being an artist.

I would say that no film is apolitical. There are politics in all films. Any film that is anchored in a society any film that deals with humanity is necessarily political.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

My political science degree is always on the back-burner. I took my LSAT so even if I want to take the LSAT again I know what I'm getting into. I'll keep it on the back-burner. Who knows maybe with my popularity I can have a career in politics with a law degree. I think it'll work out either way.

The challenge in working in politics particularly if you're working for a political party is that everyone's a messenger.

Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.

There's people coming in who've never done any politics at all who've never been in a trade union they've never been in a political party they've never done anything but they do feel a kind of urgency.

Things happen in American politics in the political center. If the President will meet us in the center there are things we can accomplish.

It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues which I think is good although it's not going to solve the problems.

I'm not very active politically. The causes I work on offer immediate practical accessible help and politics has never meant that to me.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole an empty place and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

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.

You have to believe that it's through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.

I've never worked in politics never been a member of an official committee or a political party.

Thus the focus on this main political goal must become more visible in EU politics and to achieve this we need a political impulse. It must be clear what the priorities on the agenda are.

Local politics like everything else are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.