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
I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215It 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. 1515Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967