In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830Quotes
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933Why 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, 1787It 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. 1515There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.
—Horace, c. 8 BCWhat 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, 1830People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziI shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796