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, 1787Quotes
The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863To 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 BCI work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917Whether 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, 2001The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867It 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