Archive

Quotes

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BC

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

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

—Laozi

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

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

—H. Rap Brown, 1967