A society of sheep must, in time, beget a government of wolves. -Bertrand
de Juvenal
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
The best thing about this group of candidates is that only one of them can win. -Will Rogers
If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. -Jay Leno
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -Nietzsche
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -P.J. O'Rourke
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. -Sir Francis Bacon
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction. -George W. Bush
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government. -Thomas Paine
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. -George Washington
If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. -Eisenhower
On August 19, 1934, about 95 percent of registered voters in Germany went to the poles and gave Hitler 38 million votes of approval (90 percent of the vote). -The History Place
We don't need an election. We need the Orkin man. -Billmon
And that's why ... they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.
-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer
If the citizenry does not punish liars, then it cannot expect the truth. -James Bovard
People have the mental habit of assuming that the powerful control their own outcomes. They don’t. The militarization of police forces, white flight and urban abandonment, even the international system of dollar hegemony that the military backstops ... these all develop with multiple determinations, more akin to weather than strategy, with the larger system taking on a character independent of the agents within it. Changing outcomes is not the same as controlling them. -Stan Goff
The way of a superior man is three-fold: Virtuous he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.
-Confucious
"You know," he went on, "when men who understand what is happening--the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments--when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand, in this sense, in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don't understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great 'patriotic' mob, will they understand then, when they did not before? -Martin Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
"(terror means) killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders". -Bill Clinton
As a practicing warrior for many years, I am convinced of the complete futility of war. It settles only problems of the past and creates the new problems of the future. There is no place in the world today for the narrow, competitive nationalism that sparks the tender of war. My long experience as an airman has taught me the folly of the artificial borders of political states. The ease with which the airman passes them by with his load of peaceful commerce or atomic destruction should have served notice long since that they are no longer necessary.
I am convinced that the people of this planet must ultimately and inevitably move toward a single form of world government if civilization is to survive. But it is our immediate task to see that this world government comes as a mutual federation of free peoples rather than through the ruthless domination of a master state enslaving all the others. -General Claire Chennault, Way of a Fighter
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
-Oscar Ameringer
The best thing about this group of candidates is that only one of them can win. -Will Rogers
If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. -Jay Leno
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -Nietzsche
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
-Ronald Reagan
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. -P.J. O'Rourke
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
-George Washington
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise. -Sir Francis Bacon
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction. -George W. Bush
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government. -Thomas Paine
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. -George Washington
If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. -Eisenhower
On August 19, 1934, about 95 percent of registered voters in Germany went to the poles and gave Hitler 38 million votes of approval (90 percent of the vote). -The History Place
We don't need an election. We need the Orkin man. -Billmon
And that's why ... they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.
-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer
If the citizenry does not punish liars, then it cannot expect the truth. -James Bovard
People have the mental habit of assuming that the powerful control their own outcomes. They don’t. The militarization of police forces, white flight and urban abandonment, even the international system of dollar hegemony that the military backstops ... these all develop with multiple determinations, more akin to weather than strategy, with the larger system taking on a character independent of the agents within it. Changing outcomes is not the same as controlling them. -Stan Goff
The way of a superior man is three-fold: Virtuous he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear.
-Confucious
"You know," he went on, "when men who understand what is happening--the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments--when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand, in this sense, in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don't understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great 'patriotic' mob, will they understand then, when they did not before? -Martin Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
"(terror means) killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders". -Bill Clinton
As a practicing warrior for many years, I am convinced of the complete futility of war. It settles only problems of the past and creates the new problems of the future. There is no place in the world today for the narrow, competitive nationalism that sparks the tender of war. My long experience as an airman has taught me the folly of the artificial borders of political states. The ease with which the airman passes them by with his load of peaceful commerce or atomic destruction should have served notice long since that they are no longer necessary.
I am convinced that the people of this planet must ultimately and inevitably move toward a single form of world government if civilization is to survive. But it is our immediate task to see that this world government comes as a mutual federation of free peoples rather than through the ruthless domination of a master state enslaving all the others. -General Claire Chennault, Way of a Fighter
A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country. -Texas
Guinan
Politics, n: [Poly "many" + tics "blood-sucking parasites"] -Larry Hardiman
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. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin where it belongs. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. -George E. MacDonald
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices -Voltaire
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice. -Lord Acton
Reason, justice, & equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men. It is interest alone which does it, and it is interest alone which can be trusted. -Jefferson
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. -Albert Einstein
That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Good intention will always be pleaded for every assumption of power . . . . It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. -Samuel Adams
Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
I don't even waste my time anymore interviewing politicians. They bloviate, but they don't communicate. Washington is so drowned in words and disconnected from reality that it resembles an open-air insane asylum.
In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" -Ron Suskind
Bush isn't as stupid or pigheaded as people think he is. -Bob Inglis, 2/19/07
Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. -George Bush Jr.
The president saying that we didn't want to be perceived as meddling, is, frankly, not what America's history is all about. -John McCain
"If I can find out which one takes the least tax, I'll vote for them." -John Lennon
Murder, cowardice, torture, dishonor: these are fruits -- and the distinguishing characteristics -- of the militarized society. What Americans once would not do even to Nazis with the blood of millions on their hands, they now do routinely to weak and wretched captives seized on little or no evidence of wrongdoing at all. We are deep in the darkness, and hurtling deeper, headlong, all the time. -Chris Floyd, Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
Politics, n: [Poly "many" + tics "blood-sucking parasites"] -Larry Hardiman
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. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase - some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse - into the dustbin where it belongs. -George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. -George E. MacDonald
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices -Voltaire
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice. -Lord Acton
Reason, justice, & equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men. It is interest alone which does it, and it is interest alone which can be trusted. -Jefferson
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. -Albert Einstein
That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Good intention will always be pleaded for every assumption of power . . . . It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
-Daniel Webster
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. -Samuel Adams
Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-James Bovard
I don't even waste my time anymore interviewing politicians. They bloviate, but they don't communicate. Washington is so drowned in words and disconnected from reality that it resembles an open-air insane asylum.
-Charley Reese
In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
-Jefferson
"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" -Ron Suskind
Bush isn't as stupid or pigheaded as people think he is. -Bob Inglis, 2/19/07
Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. -George Bush Jr.
The president saying that we didn't want to be perceived as meddling, is, frankly, not what America's history is all about. -John McCain
"If I can find out which one takes the least tax, I'll vote for them." -John Lennon
Murder, cowardice, torture, dishonor: these are fruits -- and the distinguishing characteristics -- of the militarized society. What Americans once would not do even to Nazis with the blood of millions on their hands, they now do routinely to weak and wretched captives seized on little or no evidence of wrongdoing at all. We are deep in the darkness, and hurtling deeper, headlong, all the time. -Chris Floyd, Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice
must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will
exert upon events in the political field.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. -Adlai E. Stevenson
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. -Timothy McVeigh
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. -Mark Twain
Once power is unaccountable, it becomes the possession of the most ruthless. Loyal party membership protected neither the Brownshirts nor the Bolsheviks. And it will not protect Bush's Republican apologists. -Paul Craig Roberts
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war. -Donald Rumsfeld
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. -Jefferson
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. They [the makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. -Judge Learned Hand
And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still ... put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.
-Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -C.S. Lewis
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. -Buddha
A successful politician is someone who can stand on a fence and make people believe it's a platform. -Doug Larson
Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives. -Abba Eban
Obama was inaugurated on a Tuesday. On Friday, he bombed with drones in the Swat Valley. Three days in office and he’s a war criminal. -Cindy Sheehan
If you thoroughly consider your situation, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups. You should have made efforts to liberate it rather than fight to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed. The White House leader, under such circumstances, and regardless of who he is, is like a train driver who cannot but travel on the railways designed by these pressure groups.
-Albert Einstein
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -Plato
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
-Clarence Darrow
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning. -Adlai E. Stevenson
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. -Timothy McVeigh
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. -Mark Twain
Once power is unaccountable, it becomes the possession of the most ruthless. Loyal party membership protected neither the Brownshirts nor the Bolsheviks. And it will not protect Bush's Republican apologists. -Paul Craig Roberts
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
-John F. Kennedy
Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war. -Donald Rumsfeld
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
-Churchill
When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. -Jefferson
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. They [the makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. -Judge Learned Hand
And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still ... put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.
-Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -C.S. Lewis
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. -Buddha
A successful politician is someone who can stand on a fence and make people believe it's a platform. -Doug Larson
Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives. -Abba Eban
Obama was inaugurated on a Tuesday. On Friday, he bombed with drones in the Swat Valley. Three days in office and he’s a war criminal. -Cindy Sheehan
If you thoroughly consider your situation, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups. You should have made efforts to liberate it rather than fight to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed. The White House leader, under such circumstances, and regardless of who he is, is like a train driver who cannot but travel on the railways designed by these pressure groups.
