Archive

Quotes

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

—Laozi

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

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

—E.B. White, 1944

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC