I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Quotes
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, 2000Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944It 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. 1515People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005If 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. 1330Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziThe first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970