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Quotes

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

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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 country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

A 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, 2000

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

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

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944