Archive

Quotes

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

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

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

—Laozi

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

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

—E.B. White, 1944

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

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

—Tacitus, c. 117

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

—Che Guevara, 1968

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

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843