Archive

Quotes

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

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

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

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

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—E.B. White, 1944

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

—Che Guevara, 1968