Archive

Quotes

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

—Al Smith, 1933

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 BC

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 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

My 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

No 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, 1958

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985