Sourced and curated.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.8

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.6

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 9.6

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1762

★ 9.4

Political literature · Economic literature

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!

1883

★ 9.3

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Declaration of Independence

1776

★ 8.9

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare; and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Constitution of the United States

1787

★ 8.9

Man is by nature a political animal.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 8.7

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.7

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.2

No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 8.1

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 8.1

Curiosity...is a Lust of the mind.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 8.0

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince · 1532

★ 7.9

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty · 1859

★ 7.9

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785

★ 7.8

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Bill of Rights · 1789

★ 7.6

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

Federalist 51 · 1788

★ 7.6

America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without.

Walt Whitman

Democratic Vistas · 1871

★ 7.6

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

Philosophical literature · Political literature

Federalist 10 · 1787

★ 7.5

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Political charter · Political literature

Rights of Man · 1792

★ 7.3

To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice.

Magna Carta

1215

★ 7.3

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 7.2

Treatise · Political literature

John Locke

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 7.2

But where says some is the king of America?...In America the law is king.

Common Sense · 1776

★ 7.2

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Bill of Rights · 1789

★ 7.2

Essay · Historical literature · Political literature

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte · 1852

★ 7.1

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Kautilya

300 BC

★ 7.1

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 7.1

No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Men · 1790

★ 7.1

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Albert Camus

The Rebel · 1951

★ 7.1

The happiness of society is the end of government.

John Adams

1776

★ 7.1

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Benjamin Franklin

1755

★ 7.1

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

Federalist 15 · 1787

★ 7.1

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

Albert Camus

The Rebel · 1951

★ 7.1

A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation.

Edmund Burke

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free.

John Stuart Mill

1862

★ 7.0

A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Mao Zedong

1927

★ 7.0

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

The Crisis · 1776

★ 7.0

It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Federalist 1 · 1787

★ 7.0

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Federalist 10 · 1787

★ 7.0

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Federalist 51 · 1788

★ 7.0

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

Federalist 51 · 1788

★ 7.0

The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.

Federalist 22 · 1787

★ 7.0

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

Federalist 1 · 1787

★ 7.0

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Federalist 47 · 1788

★ 7.0

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Edmund Burke

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

The American continents... Are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

James Monroe

1823 State of the Union · 1823

★ 7.0

The State is not "abolished", it withers away.

Friedrich Engels

Anti-Duhring · 1878

★ 7.0

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell

Politics and the English Language · 1946

★ 7.0

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial and article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

The American Crisis · 1776

★ 6.9

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy.

Francis Fukuyama

The End of History? · 1989

★ 6.9

War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.

Karl Von Clausewitz

On War · 1833

★ 6.8

Poem · Political literature

Who built the Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?... Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished Did the masons go?

Bertolt Brecht

Questions from a Worker Who Reads · 1936

★ 6.8

The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the cause of its destruction.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 6.4

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.

Common Sense · 1776

★ 6.4

Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.4

Essay · Historical literature · Political literature

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte · 1852

★ 6.3