Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Quotes
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
—Aristophanes, c. 424 BCYou campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887The 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, 1774The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906