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, 2000Quotes
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCHe may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.
—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BCThe poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385