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Quotes

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

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

—Frederick the Great, c. 1770

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

—Catherine the Great, c. 1796

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

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

—H. Rap Brown, 1967

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

—Dean Acheson, 1970

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830