No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215Quotes
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
—Aristophanes, c. 424 BCTo 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 BCIt is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792What 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, 1830The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCSic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990