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Quotes

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

—Arthur Miller, 2001

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

—Paul Valéry, 1943

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

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

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

—Aristophanes, c. 424 BC

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774

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

—E.B. White, 1944

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

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