It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Quotes
Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867A 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, 2000Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887If 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. 1330Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BCEvery communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882