Archive

Quotes

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

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

—Laozi

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

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

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

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

The 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

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

—Che Guevara, 1968