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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

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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 vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

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

—Mao Zedong, 1938

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774