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Quotes

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

It 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. 1515

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787