The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787Quotes
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Why 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, 1787There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862No 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, 1958The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908No 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, 1215Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziThe Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968It 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