Archive

Quotes

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

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

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

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

No 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, 1958

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

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

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

—Laozi