The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117Quotes
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCIn politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385What 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