Archive

Quotes

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

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

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

—E.B. White, 1944

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

—Che Guevara, 1968

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