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Quotes

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

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

—Che Guevara, 1968

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

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

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

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