Archive

Quotes

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

—Horace, c. 8 BC

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

—Aristophanes, c. 424 BC