Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963Quotes
The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968A 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, 2000To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.
—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BCA government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944No 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 U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972Whether 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, 2001Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843