Quotes about power and politics

That government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do.

That government is best which governs not at all

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

The first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Where there is no vision, the people perish

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

O brave new world
That has such people in ’t!

It is easier to govern others than to prevent being governed.

Ability wins us the esteem of the true men, luck that of the people.

There are foolish people who know and who skilfully use their folly.

Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.

Many people despise, but few know how to bestow wealth.

We find very few ungrateful people when we are able to confer favours.

Propriety is the least of all laws, but the most obeyed.

“Sympathy for all”—would be harshness and tyranny for THEE, my good neighbour.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get round them.

Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse—the tyrant in us.

“Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour’s neighbour”:—so thinks every nation.

People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Instead of contradicting my words people ought to act in my spirit.

What a long time people were vainly disputing about the Antipodes!

There are people whom I wish well, and would that I could wish better.

If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

Clever people are the best encyclopædia.

Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.

We can secure other people’s approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.

Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one! keep from telling their happinesses to the unhappy.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either.

Satan (impatiently) to NEW-COMER. The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.

There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.

ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

AGITATOR, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors—to dislodge the worms.

ALIEN, n. An American sovereign in his probationary state.

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

AMNESTY, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

ANOINT, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts—guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.

BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.

COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously efficient.

COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.

CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.

DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.

DESTINY, n. A tyrant’s authority for crime and fool’s excuse for failure.

DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of despotism to the plague of anarchy.

EMANCIPATION, n. A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself.

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.

EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.

GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.

IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid.

INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection’s failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again.

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a “crowned head,” although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.

MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.

MANES, n. The immortal parts of dead Greeks and Romans. They were in a state of dull discomfort until the bodies from which they had exhaled were buried and burned; and they seem not to have been particularly happy afterward.

MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign’s hostility. His principal qualification is a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.

MIRACLE, n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.

MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.

MUMMY, n. An ancient Egyptian, formerly in universal use among modern civilized nations as medicine, and now engaged in supplying art with an excellent pigment. He is handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

NIRVANA, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.

NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbing and deadcatting of the opposition.

OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.

OPPOSITION, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.

ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.

OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.

PICKANINNY, n. The young of the Procyanthropos, or Americanus dominans. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.

PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.

PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it.

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

PRESBYTERIAN, n. One who holds the conviction that the government authorities of the Church should be called presbyters.

PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

PREVARICATOR, n. A liar in the caterpillar state.

PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.

PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.

RAPACITY, n. Providence without industry. The thrift of power.

RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.

REFERENDUM, n. A law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.

REPRESENTATIVE, n. In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.

RETALIATION, n. The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of Law.

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.

SCEPTER, n. A king’s staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.

SHERIFF, n. In America the chief executive officer of a county, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues.

TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

WHEAT, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.

The clemency of Princes is often but policy to win the affections of the people.

Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.

People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others.

There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer.

We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.

We exaggerate the glory of some men to detract from that of others, and we should praise Prince Conde and Marshal Turenne much less if we did not want to blame them both.

He who thinks he has the power to content the world greatly deceives himself, but he who thinks that the world cannot be content with him deceives himself yet more.

There are people who are like farces, which are praised but for a time (however foolish and distasteful they may be).

Gratitude is as the good faith of merchants: it holds commerce together; and we do not pay because it is just to pay debts, but because we shall thereby more easily find people who will lend.

Lucky people are bad hands at correcting their faults; they always believe that they are right when fortune backs up their vice or folly.

There are people whose faults become them, others whose very virtues disgrace them.

All feelings have their peculiar tone of voice, gestures and looks, and this harmony, as it is good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, makes people agreeable or disagreeable.

The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.

There are wicked people who would be much less dangerous if they were wholly without goodness.

Almost all the world takes pleasure in paying small debts; many people show gratitude for trifling, but there is hardly one who does not show ingratitude for great favours.

Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great; to console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small ability.

To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is but to reproach them with impunity.

Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.

No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.

Fortune sometimes uses our faults to exalt us, and there are tiresome people whose deserts would be ill rewarded if we did not desire to purchase their absence.

It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.

Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.

Age is a tyrant who forbids at the penalty of life all the pleasures of youth.

It is only people who possess firmness who can possess true gentleness. In those who appear gentle it is generally only weakness, which is readily converted into harshness.

Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.

Some people are so self-occupied that when in love they find a mode by which to be engrossed with the passion without being so with the person they love.

Fettered HEART, FREE SPIRIT—When one firmly fetters one’s heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one’s spirit many liberties: I said this once before But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they know it already.

Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love.

I keep silence about many things, for I do not want to put people out of countenance; and I am well content if they are pleased with things that annoy me.

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time.

A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one.

When people suffer by failing to look before them, nothing is commoner than trying to look out for some possible remedy.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

Despotism promotes general self-government, because from top to bottom it makes the individual responsible, and so produces the highest degree of activity.

In the world people take a man at his own estimate; but he must estimate himself at something. Disagreeableness is more easily tolerated than insignificance.

When we live with people who have a delicate sense of what is fitting, we get quite anxious about them if anything happens to disturb this sense.

Voluntary dependence is the best state, and how should that be possible without love?

It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.

What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.

The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.

People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.

That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

That is the reason why the Bible will never lose its power; because, as long as the world lasts, no one can stand up and say: I grasp it as a whole and understand all the parts of it. But we say humbly: as a whole it is worthy of respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?

Gemüth = Heart. The translator must proceed until he reaches the untranslatable; and then only will he have an idea of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.

A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as frozen music; and it was inevitable that many people should shake their heads over his remark. We believe that no better repetition of this fine thought can be given than by calling architecture a speechless music.

They prefer a personal attachment to a public service, and reward it better. They are vain and weak enough to look upon it as a free-will offering to their merit, and not as a burnt sacrifice to their power.

If you would be a favorite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.

At court, people embrace without acquaintance, serve one another without friendship, and injure one another without hatred. Interest, not sentiment, is the growth of that soil.

At court, many more people can hurt, than can help you; please the former, but engage the latter.

A man’s own good breeding is his best security against other people’s ill-manners.

When the old clipped money was called in for a new coinage in King William’s time, to prevent the like for the future, they stamped on the edges of the crown pieces these words, et decus et tutamen. That is exactly the case of good breeding.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments only give lustre; and many more people see than weigh.