Archive

Quotes

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

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

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

—E.B. White, 1944

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

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

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

—Laozi, c. 500 BC

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

—Tacitus, c. 117