People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005Quotes
Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865Why 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, 1787The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770