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Quotes

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

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

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

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

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

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792