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Quotes

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

My 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. 1770

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

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

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863