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
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.
—Catherine the Great, c. 1796Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
—Aristophanes, c. 424 BCThe 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.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton, 1887In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1830He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117Politics is the art of the possible.
—Otto von Bismarck, 1867I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
—H. Rap Brown, 1967Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944