Lapham’s Quarterly

Every country has the government it deserves.

No 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.

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

What, 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.

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

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Whether 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.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

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.

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

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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.

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.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

Politics is the art of the possible.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

It 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.

No 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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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

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

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The 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.

The 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.