Archive

Quotes

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

—Arthur Miller, 2001

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

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

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

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

—Laozi

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830