Archive

Quotes

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

It 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, 1625

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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. 1330

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

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

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

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

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

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995