Archive

Quotes

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. 1330

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

—Laozi

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1944

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

—Walter Bagehot, 1863

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

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton, 1887

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

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

What 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, 1830

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

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

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

—George Borrow, 1843

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

—Che Guevara, 1968

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967