Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Quotes
Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867No 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, 1958What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968No 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, 1215