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Quotes

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

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

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

—Laozi

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

—Arthur Miller, 2001

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

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

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

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

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

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

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

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

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

—Aristophanes, c. 424 BC

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