The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944Quotes
You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
—Aristophanes, c. 424 BCWhat 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, 1830Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843