The Mother of All Political Quotations Threads

[On the Road]

Carefully culled from http://www.born-today.com/. All have at least passing relevance to the political world.

Please add your favorite. I will return shortly with more. The final quotation is my favorite zinger in the history of insults:

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power."
Charles A. Beard (11/27/1874 ¡V 09/01/1948); US historian

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
Andre Gide (11/22/1869 ¡V 02/19/1951); French writer

"The public seldom forgive twice."
Johann Casper Lavater (11/15/1741 ¡V 01/02/1801); Swiss theologian

"The press is a mill that grinds all that is put into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread."
William C. Bryant (11/03/1794 ¡V 06/12/1878); US writer, editor

"A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top."
James Reston (11/03/1909 ¡V 12/06/1995)

"What do you do if you're in a room with Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and John Sununu, and you have a gun with only two bullets? Shoot Sununu twice."
Michael Dukakis (11/03/1933 ¡V ); US senator, presidential candidate

"Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.
(A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.)"
Nicolas Boileau (11/01/1636 ¡V 03/13/1711); French writer

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in."
H. R. Haldeman (10/27/1926 ¡V 11/12/1993); US presidential staffer, Watergate co-conspirator

"In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels."
Georges Jacques Danton (10/26/1759 ¡V 04/05/1794); French revolutionary

"The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing."
(James Henry) Leigh Hunt (10/19/1784 ¡V 08/28/1859); English writer

Earl of Sandwich: "I am convinced, Mr. Wilkes, that you will die either of a pox or on the gallows."
John Wilkes (10/17/1725 ¡V 12/26/1797): "That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your mistress or your principles."

[On the Road]

1. More!

I like them better broken up a little:

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. 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."
Noah Webster (10/16/1758 ¡V 05/28/1843); Biography

"Nixon is a purposeless man, but I have great faith in his cowardice."
Jimmy Breslin (10/17/1930 ¡V )

"We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide."
Ramsay MacDonald (10/12/1866 ¡V 11/09/1937); English Prime Minister (39)

"Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion."
Joseph W. Alsop, Jr. (10/11/1910 ¡V ??/??/

"Well, there doesn't seem anything else for an ex-President to do but to go into the country and raise big pumpkins."
Chester Allen Arthur (10/05/1830 ¡V 11/18/1886)

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
Vaclav Havel (10/05/1936 ¡V ) Czech President

"We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business."
Jimmy Carter (10/01/1924 ¡V )

"The chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn wide and deep."
Mary Eliza Church Terrell (09/23/1863 ¡V 07/24/1954); US writer, social reformer

[On the Road]

2. OK, One More Installment

"(George Bush) has the look about him of someone who might sit up and yip for a Dog Yummie."
Mike Royko (09/19/1932 – 04/29/1997)

"But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power -- they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it."
Mary Stewart (09/17/1916 – ); English writer

" one to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself."
Herbert Henry Asquith (09/12/1852 – 02/15/1928); English Prime Minister (35), husband of the inimitable Margot Tennant Asquith

"I think the world is run by C students."
Al McGuire (09/07/1931 – 01/26/2001); US basketball coach

"One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious."
Francois Rene Chateaubriand (09/04/1776 – 07/04/1848); French Writer


"Everyone should rise up and say, 'Thank you, Mr. President, for bombing Haiphong.'"
Martha Mitchell (09/02/1918 – 05/31/1996); US political wife

"If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it."
Norman Thomas (11/20/1884 – 12/19/1968); US social reformer

[Liberal_Andy]

3. this one used to be my tagline

"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 Americus