The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921Quotes
Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BCMy people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796Do 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.
—LaoziPolitics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944It 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, 1625A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117