Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Quotes
He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625The 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, 1774Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BCWhy 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, 1787I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944