Archive

Quotes

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

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

—Al Smith, 1933

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850

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

—Robert Byrd, 2005

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

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

—E.B. White, 1944

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

—Otto von Bismarck, 1867

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

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

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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