Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Quotes
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887To 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 BCI say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917A 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, 2000The 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, 1921He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970