The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921Quotes
I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCDemocracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792