Archive

Quotes

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

A 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, 2000

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Whether 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, 2001

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908