I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796Quotes
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziNatural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832To 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 BCYou campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865