The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Quotes
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1908The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117The 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, 1921I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215The 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, 1774I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Why 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, 1787You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985