Archive

Quotes

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

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

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

—Frederick the Great, c. 1770

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

—H.L. Mencken, 1921

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944