All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933Quotes
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 BCThere is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863It 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 real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985Whether 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, 2001I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843My 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 say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830