If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330Quotes
I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938No 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, 1958A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830To 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 BCYou campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005