Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865Quotes
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, 2000There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
—Aristophanes, c. 424 BCI work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855