Archive

Quotes

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

—E.B. White, 1944

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

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BC

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

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

—Mao Zedong, 1938