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Quotes

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

—Al Smith, 1933

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—Mao Zedong, 1938

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

—David Foster Wallace, 2000

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

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