On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Quotes
Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
—Vegetius, c. 385Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCO citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCI’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BCAn appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908