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Quotes

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

—Horace, c. 8 BC

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

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

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

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

—Mao Zedong, 1938

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

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

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

—Laozi

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

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

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985