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James Madison29 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Liberty 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. — James Madison · 1787It 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. — James Madison · 1788The 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. — James Madison · 1788Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. — James Madison · 1787All 29 quotes →Alexander Hamilton14 quotes
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It 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. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787The 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. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Of 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. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787The vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788All 14 quotes →John Adams9 quotes
I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818In Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. — John Adams · 1814I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. — John Adams · 1780All 9 quotes →Edmund Burke8 quotes
A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790Parties must ever exist in a free country. — Edmund Burke · 1775Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. — Edmund Burke · 1790Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. — Edmund Burke · 1774Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. — Edmund Burke · 1775The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered. — Edmund Burke · 1775All 8 quotes →Abraham Lincoln7 quotes
If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. — Abraham Lincoln · 1838To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization. — Abraham Lincoln · 1859Yet in all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling. — Abraham Lincoln · 1860With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. — Abraham Lincoln · 1858No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854All 7 quotes →Aristotle4 quotes
Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCNo tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCHe who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled. — Aristotle · 335 BCTherefore, the good of man must be the goal of the science of politics. — Aristotle · 322 BCGeorge Orwell4 quotes
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 · 1946In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. — George Orwell · 1946There are only four ways in which a ruling class can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself. — George Orwell · 1949Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does. — George Orwell · 1943Henry Adams4 quotes
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds. — Henry Adams · 1907Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. — Henry Adams · 1907Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. — Henry Adams · 1907Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education. — Henry Adams · 1907John Locke4 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community. — John Locke · 1690Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. — John Locke · 1690The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690John Stuart Mill4 quotes
Liberty consists in doing what one desires. — John Stuart Mill · 1859A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. — John Stuart Mill · 1859The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. — John Stuart Mill · 1859No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust. — John Stuart Mill · 1848Socrates4 quotes
Democracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCDemocracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. — Socrates · 375 BCThe city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office must needs be the best governed and freest from strife. — Socrates · 375 BCUntil philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils. — Socrates · 375 BCKarl Marx3 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848Albert Camus2 quotes
Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. — Albert Camus · 1951Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. — Albert Camus · 1962Bill Clinton2 quotes
I did not have sexual relations with that woman. — Bill Clinton · 1998The American people have spoken-but it's going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said. — Bill Clinton · 2000George Savile, Lord Halifax2 quotes
A known liar should be outlawed in a well-ordered government. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750Wherever a knave is not punished, an honest man is laughed at. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750Hannah Arendt2 quotes
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. — Hannah Arendt · 1969Jeremy Bentham2 quotes
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832I do really take it for an indisputable truth, and a truth that is one of the corner stones of political science—the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave. — Jeremy Bentham · 1797Learned Hand2 quotes
Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all. — Learned Hand · 1943We believe, and I think properly, that when the men who met in 1787 to make a Constitution made the best political document ever made, they did so very largely because they were great compromisers. — Learned Hand · 1951Mao Zedong2 quotes
Every Communist must grasp the truth: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." — Mao Zedong · 1938Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed. — Mao Zedong · 1938Margaret Thatcher2 quotes
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman. — Margaret Thatcher · 1965Pennies don't fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth. — Margaret Thatcher · 1979Mark Twain2 quotes
I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says:
"Yes, the little ones does." — Mark Twain · 1894The chances are that a man cannot get into congress now without resorting to arts and means that should render him unfit to go there. — Mark Twain · 1873Martin Luther King, Jr.2 quotes
A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1967"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Michael Oakeshott2 quotes
In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behavior in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. — Michael Oakeshott · 1962To 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 · 1962Milton Friedman2 quotes
There is an invisible hand in politics that operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market. In politics, individuals who seek to promote only the public good are led by an invisible hand to promote special interests that it was no part of their intention to promote. — Milton Friedman · 1983One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. — Milton Friedman · 1975Ralph Waldo Emerson2 quotes
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Reg2 quotes
If you wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans. — Reg · 1979Listen, the only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front! — Reg · 1979Reinhold Niebuhr2 quotes
Democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems. — Reinhold Niebuhr · 1944Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. — Reinhold Niebuhr · 1944Richard Nixon2 quotes
People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. — Richard Nixon · 1973Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support. — Richard Nixon · 1969Ronald Reagan2 quotes
I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan · 1984And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. — Ronald Reagan · 1989Theodore Roosevelt2 quotes
The various admirable movements in which I have been engaged have always developed among their members a large lunatic fringe. — Theodore Roosevelt · 1913On the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together. — Theodore Roosevelt · 1901