Politics/Government

 

 

The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.

-- Henry B. Adams

 

I didn't accept it. I received it.

-- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan.

 

I don't know exactly what democracy is. But we need more of it.

-- Anonymous Chinese Student, during protests in Tianamen Square, Beijing, 1989

 

Republican boys date Democratic girls. They plan to marry Republican girls, but feel they're entitled to a little fun first.

-- Anonymous

 

Asking politicians to vote themselves out of power is like asking rabbits not to multiply, it ain't natural.

-- Bob Beckel, on term limits, CBS This Morning, 3/30/95

 

CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

 

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

-- Otto von Bismarck

 

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

-- George Burns

 

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

-- Samuel Butler

 

Just buy a box of popcorn and a Coca-Cola and sit back and watch.

-- James Carville, Clinton advisor, offering advice for Democrats on the term-limits vote in the House

 

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

-- Wynn Catlin, also attributed to Will Rogers

 

I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...

-- G. K. Chesterton

 

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

-- Winston Churchill

 

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

-- Winston Churchill

 

Sir, I would rather be right than be President.

-- Henry Clay, Speech, 1850, referring to the Compromise Measure

 

Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.

-- Mark B. Cohen

 

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.

-- Clarence Darrow

 

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.

-- Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

 

The multitude is always in the wrong.

-- Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1684

 

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

-- Paulo Freire

 

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

-- Robert Frost

 

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

 

The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is Marxism.

-- Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism

 

Tauzin backs term limits -- But he thinks it's a bad idea.

-- Headline, story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb 20, 1995

 

We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

-- Buck Henry

 

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.

-- Adolf Hitler

 

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

-- Robert Hutchins, Great Books, 1954

 

Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.

-- Bob Inglis, 1995

 

All over Washington today, the politicians and the power brokers are happy. In fact, if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of champagne corks popping.

-- Paul Jacob, Term Limits Executive Director

 

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

-- Thomas Jefferson

 

Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?

-- Pope Julius III

 

The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner; and murdering a government poultry inspector.

-- Knight Ridder News Service dispatch

 

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre. (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)

-- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

 

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

 

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2) Advising the President.
3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.

-- David Letterman

 

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

-- Abraham Lincoln

 

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

-- Abraham Lincoln

 

Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him.

-- Rich Little

 

Politics have no relation to morals.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

 

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

 

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

-- Groucho Marx

 

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

-- Eugene McCarthy

 

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

-- H. L. Mencken

 

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

-- H. L. Mencken

 

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.

-- H. L. Mencken

 

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

-- John Stuart Mill

 

My father was a minister. I had to make up for the lack of sin.

-- Milwuakee mayor, on why he became a politician

 

Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.

-- Londo Molari

 

Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House -- as Brutus loved Caesar.

-- Bill Moyers

 

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

-- George Jean Nathan

 

We do not have censorship. What we have is a limitation on what newspapers can report.

-- Louis Nel, Deputy Minister of Information, South Africa

 

Oregon Democratic Senate candidate Tom Bruggere, in describing his support for comprehensive health care during a candidates' forum, said he supported "erection-to-resurrection" coverage. He later amended that to "cradle to grave."

-- News report

 

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

 

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

 

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

-- Boies Penrose, 1931

 

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.

-- Pentagon official, on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

 

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.

-- Polish proverb

 

I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work.

-- Ronald Reagan, Former U.S. President, on a speaking tour of Japan, 1989

 

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

-- Ronald Reagan, Saturday Evening Post, 1965

 

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

-- James Reston

 

Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it.

-- Tom Robbins

 

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?

-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

 

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

-- Will Rogers

 

The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"

-- Will Rogers

 

There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.

-- Will Rogers

 

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

-- Will Rogers

 

The Republicans have a new healthcare proposal: Just say NO to illness!

-- Mark Russell

 

If God had meant us to vote, He would have given us candidates.

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

 

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

-- Harry Shearer

 

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.

-- Adlai Stevenson

 

The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.

-- Adlai Stevenson

 

Hey, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!

-- Dr. Strangelove

 

When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment... it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.

-- Margaret Thatcher, on the Falklands Conflict

 

That government is best which governs least.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

 

Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

-- Harry S. Truman

 

The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten.

-- Mark Twain

 

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

-- Oscar Wilde

 

When making public policy decisions about new technologies for the Government, I think one should ask oneself which technologies would best strengthen the hand of a police state. Then, do not allow the Government to deploy those technologies.

-- Philip Zimmermann

 

The fantasy which serves as a support for the figure of the Stalinist Communist is therefore exactly the same as the fantasy which is at work in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.

-- Slavoj Zizek

History

 

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

-- Winston Churchill

 

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual intervention of civilization.

-- George Clemenceau

 

History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.

-- Clarence Darrow

 

Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.

-- Albert Einstein

 

History is more or less bunk.

-- Henry Ford

 

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

-- Aldous Huxley

 

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

-- Aldous Huxley

 

Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow aint as bad as it seems.

-- Billy Joel

 

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

-- Erica Jong

 

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

-- Karl Marx

 

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.

-- Ayn Rand

 

You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.

-- Will Rogers

 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-- George Santayana

 

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities.
I failed history.

-- Sting

 

Sir Francis Drake circumsized the world with a 100-foot clipper.

-- Unknown history student

 

The sun never sets on the British empire because Britain is in the east and the sun sets in the west.

-- Unknown history student

 

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

-- Virginia Woolf

 

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

-- Virginia Woolf

Nationality/Patriotism

 

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

-- Dave Barry

 

When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree.

-- William Blake

 

As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.

-- Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries

 

I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.

-- Gerald Early, writer, baseball documentary, 1994

 

America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.

-- Bobcat Goldthwait

 

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

-- Samuel Johnson

 

Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to.

-- Shane Leslie

 

From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea--written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo--There is no substitute for victory!

-- General Douglas MacArthur

 

I shall return.

-- General Douglas MacArthur

 

Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.

-- General Douglas MacArthur

 

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

 

The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

-- John Stuart Mill

 

The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

 

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

 

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

-- General George Patton

 

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

-- George Santayana

 

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

-- Wilfred Sheed

 

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

-- Arnold Toynbee

 

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

-- Typewriting exercise

 

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

-- Oscar Wilde

 

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

-- Oscar Wilde

Success/Failure

 

There are trivial truths, and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

-- Neils Bohr

 

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

-- Niels Bohr

 

Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be acheived.

-- William Jennings Bryant

 

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.

-- Francis Crawford

 

... I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

-- Thomas Edison

 

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

-- Albert Einstein

 

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.

-- Henry Ford

 

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

-- Robert G. Ingersoll

 

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.

-- Abraham Lincoln

 

The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

-- Abraham Lincoln

 

Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.

-- Orison Swett Marden

 

No other success can compensate for failure in the home.

-- David O. McKay, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Advice to parents at General Conference of he LDS Church, April, 1964

 

What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?

-- Robert Schuller

 

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousands times worse than nothing.

-- Sydney Smith

 

Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile.

-- Arnold Toynbee

 

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

-- Gore Vidal

 

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

-- George E. Woodberry