Archive

Quotes

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

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

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

—Laozi

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

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

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

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

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

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—E.B. White, 1944

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865