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, 1855Quotes
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970No 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, 1958The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385A 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, 2000There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887