Archive

Quotes

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

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

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

What, 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

It 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. 1515

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

—Laozi

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

—H. Rap Brown, 1967