Archive

Quotes

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

—George Borrow, 1843

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Al Smith, 1933

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

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

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

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

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

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

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

No 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, 1215