Archive

Quotes

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Whether 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, 2001

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

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

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385