A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967Quotes
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCNatural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCIt 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. 1515If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330The 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