Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Quotes
People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCNatural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832The 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, 1774All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933What, 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, 1855The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BCThe best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—Laozi