Archive

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

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

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

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

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

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

—Che Guevara, 1968

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

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

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

The 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, 1774

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

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

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC