Archive

Quotes

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

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

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

—Che Guevara, 1968

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Laozi

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

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

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