Archive

Quotes

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

—Al Smith, 1933

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

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

—Laozi

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BC

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985

What, 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, 1855

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515