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Quotes

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

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

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

No 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, 1215

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944

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

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

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

—Laozi, c. 500 BC

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

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

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

Why 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, 1787