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, 1215Quotes
Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865The 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, 1921No 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, 1958The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziThe first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCThe poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933