Written 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 BCQuotes
Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787What, 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, 1855I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917