Perhaps As Many

We have a great many politicians in the country, perhaps as many as the country requires.  I should not wish to ask for a larger supply of these; but there is a wide difference between the politician and the statesman.  A politician, for example, is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation.  The politician thinks of the success of his party, the statesman of the good of his country.

-- James Freeman Clarke (1810 - 1888), American theologian and author, "Wanted, a Statesman", Old and New magazine (December 1870)