Archive

Quotes

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

—E.B. White, 1944

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933