Archive

Quotes

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BC

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

—Laozi

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908