My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.more Mark Twain quotes | | We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.more Mark Twain quotes | | How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better.more Mark Twain quotes | | All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.more Mark Twain quotes | A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.more Sir Alex Fraser Tytler quotes | Do not mistake for conspiracy and intrigue what can best be explained by stupidity and incompetence.more Unknown quotes | A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.more Unknown quotes | | Letter to the President of the United States from an American Indian: 'Be careful with your immigration laws. We were careless with ours.'more Unknown quotes | | | The worst penalties are always imposed on those seeking to help the oppressed.more Unknown quotes | There are three parties in Washington, D.C. . . . Republican, Democratic and Cocktail.more Unknown quotes | We need a law that will allow a voter to sue a candidate for breach of promise.more Unknown quotes | When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.' more Unknown quotes | Democracy, n.: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, [chaos].more U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 quotes | Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.more Paul Valéry quotes | Productive, private citizens in outlying regions of our nation and states are financially burdened to pay for a parasite public economy of lawmakers, lobbyists, contractors, and bureaucrats in the political centers.more Richard K. Vedder quotes | The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent.more Gore Vidal quotes | In general, the art of government
consists in taking as much money as possible
from one party of the citizens to give to the other.more Voltaire quotes | It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.more Voltaire quotes | It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.more Voltaire quotes | It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.more Voltaire quotes | Your book is dedicated
by the soundest reason.
You had better get out of France
as quickly as you can.more Voltaire quotes | War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.more Karl von Clausewitz quotes | Spiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous.more Ludwig von Mises quotes | Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe...more Ludwig von Mises quotes | | It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well-founded, the more they hate him.more Ludwig von Mises quotes | But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.more Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes | Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?more George Wallace quotes | | I never liked the atmosphere of Washington. I early saw that it was impossible to build up a race of which the leaders were spending most of their time, thought and energy in trying to get into office, or in trying to stay there after they were in.more Booker T. Washington quotes | All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.more George Washington quotes | The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissensions, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils, and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. more George Washington quotes | The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism … The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.more George Washington quotes | There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party: but, in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.more George Washington quotes | | It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.more George Washington quotes | Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is. There is no law that dictates impeachment. What the Constitution says is “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and we define that.more Maxine Waters quotes | No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society.more Daniel Webster quotes | Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, not any government secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.more Daniel Webster quotes | But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely
educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No,
I'm, not advocating some, sort of mass extinction of these
unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already
doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only
replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to
people who can't afford to have babies.
There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true,
but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in
individual rights, we view any program which might treat the
disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited
and...well...so Republican.more Ron Weddington quotes | The great trouble with you Americans is that you are still under the influence of that second-rate -- shall I say third-rate? -- mind, Karl Marx.more H. G. Wells quotes | | ... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world order ... and will die protesting it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.more H. G. Wells quotes | |
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