You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985Quotes
Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385Whether 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, 2001Politics 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, 1967An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908