It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and
appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of all other countries and
peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that
fascism did.
Ernest Hemingway
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Seneca, 65 AD
When you replace speed cameras with duds, what you're
doing is giving people a false sense of insecurity.
Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General (2002)
Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many,
and "ticks," a small, annoying bloodsucker.
Dave Barry
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.
Frank Zappa
QUESTION AUTHORITY! THINK FOR YOURSELF....
Before it becomes illegal.
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it
does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought and action which
seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, and hierarchic structures of
all kinds and to challenge their legitimacy -- and if they cannot
justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to
undermine them and expand the scope of freedom.
Noam Chomsky
Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson,
etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic
features of capitalism. Anarchism means peace and tranquility to all.
August Spies, Haymarket anarchist
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil
is that enough good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from
religious conviction.
Quoted in Sam J. Ervin, Jr.,
"Protecting the Constitution"
Michie, 1984
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Facts are a better basis for decisions than ideology.
Howard Dean (campaign 2004)
Gone are the far-off days of worthy debate. Politics today has to be sold
to a viewer whose finger is poised over the television zapper. The 1988
campaign set new lows ... [it] also demonstrated the power of image-making
in changing a result.
The Economist, August 17-23, 1991
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government,
they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
Abraham Lincoln
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been
enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Jack London's The Iron Heel).
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the
very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
C.A. Beard
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one
tenth part.
Benjamin Franklin
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first,
the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and
second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.
Edward Dowling (1941)
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man
for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls
which imprison men because they are different from other men.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but
the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to
take it from them, but to inform their discretions.
Thomas Jefferson, 1802
The single most powerful faction in politics today is not liberalism or
conservatism, but privilege and corruption.
Paul Kienitz, 2001
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from
the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the
candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the
result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed
by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has
been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following
sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great
courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance
to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.
Alexander Tyler
(regarding the fall of the Athenian Republic)
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations
and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they
cannot actually masturbate.
Dave Barry
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