Archive

Quotes

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

What 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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

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

—Laozi