Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963Quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865A 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, 2000Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887If 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. 1330I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917