Archive

Quotes

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

—Aristophanes, c. 424 BC

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

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

—Laozi

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005