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Quotes

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, 1855

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

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

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

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

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

—Horace, c. 8 BC

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

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

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811