If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330Quotes
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968Written 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 BCO citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCPolitics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908The 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, 1774The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906