If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330Quotes
It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.
—Francis Bacon, 1625The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.
—Judge Learned Hand, 1944An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Whether 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, 2001Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811