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, 2001Quotes
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985To 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 BCSic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967No 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, 1958The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCPolitics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943The 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, 1774In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938