Archive

Quotes

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

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