Quotes · Skopia

465 quotes

Europeans often ask, and Americans do not always explain, how it happens that this great office, the greatest in the world, unless we except the Papacy, to which any man can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently filled by great and striking men.

James Bryce

The American Commonwealth · 1888

★ 0.9

Political literature

Whether ours shall continue to be a Government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.

Archibald Cox

1973

★ 0.9

Political literature

Surely of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.

Thomas Carlyle

1840

★ 1.0

Political literature

The world stood like a playing card on edge... One looked at the buildings one passed and wondered if one was to see them again.

Norman Mailer

1963

★ 1.0

Political literature

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.

Thomas Paine

The American Crisis · 1776

★ 1.1

Political literature · Philosophical literature

All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life.

Friedrich Engels

Anti-Duhring · 1878

★ 1.1

Political literature

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

John Milton

Areopagitica · 1644

★ 1.2

Pamphlet · Political literature

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.

Thomas Paine

The American Crisis · 1776

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 1 · 1787

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of...faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

James Madison

Federalist 10 · 1787

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.

James Madison

Federalist 10 · 1787

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 84 · 1788

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist 29 · 1788

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

Each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others.

James Madison

Federalist 51 · 1788

★ 1.2

Philosophical literature · Political literature

What is called monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open, and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.

Thomas Paine

Rights of Man · 1792

★ 1.2

Essay · Magazine · Political literature

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

Oscar Wilde

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 1.2

Political literature

Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy, and creates dissension.

Mao Zedong

1937

★ 1.2

Essay · Political literature

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Henry David Thoreau

The Relation of the Individual to the State · 1848

★ 1.3

Political literature

Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty.

John Milton

Areopagitica · 1644

★ 1.3

Political literature · Philosophical literature

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition, and mutual envy of the living.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 1.3

Political literature

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1835

★ 1.3

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

Karl Marx

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 1.3

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another.

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty · 1859

★ 1.3

Essay · Political literature

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.

Ida B. Wells

1892

★ 1.3

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

Simone de Beauvoir

1970

★ 1.3

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Whoever is responsible for another's becoming powerful ruins himself.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1513

★ 1.4

Essay · Political literature

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

Michael Oakeshott

On Being Conservative · 1962

★ 1.7

Essay · Political literature

Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever.

Joseph Priestley

1768

★ 1.8

Open letter · Letter · Political literature

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights, which they have delivered to our care: we owe it to our posterity, not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

Junius

1769

★ 1.8

Political literature

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

George Mason

Virginia Bill of Rights · 1776

★ 1.8

Political literature

The love of our country, as the term has usually been understood, has too often been found to be one of those specious illusions which are employed by impostors for the purpose of rendering the multitude the blind instruments of their crooked designs.

William Godwin

1793

★ 1.8

Letter · Political literature

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done whech may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Arthur James Balfour

Balfour Declaration · 1917

★ 1.8

Political literature

In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

Arthur James Balfour

Memorandum to Lord Curzon, August 11, 1919 · 1919

★ 1.8

Political literature

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

Wendell Willkie

1943

★ 1.8

Political literature

The treatment of the Negro is America's greatest and most conspicuous scandal.

Gunnar Myrdal

1944

★ 1.8

Political literature

The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

George F. Kennan

1947

★ 1.8

Political literature

America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose.

Theodore H. White

1961

★ 1.8

Political literature

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

1964

★ 1.8

Scientific literature · Political literature

There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

Luis Walter Alvarez

1967

★ 1.8

Political literature

The march of social progress is like a long and straggling parade, with the seers and prophets at its head and a smug minority bringing up the rear.

Pierre Berton

1968

★ 1.8

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