Quotations on Elections, Government, Politics, and America

Some thoughts from WIST on the day’s election. Not all of them agree with each other, but all have something, I believe, interesting to say (about the speaker if not the speech).

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
~~Bernard Baruch

Democracy means despair of ever finding any heroes to govern you, and contentedly putting up with the want of them.
~~Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (1843)

Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.
~~Ilka Chase, Past Imperfect (1942)

Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands.
~~Jesse Helms

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
~~Edmund Burke, speech to the electors at Bristol (3 Nov 1774)

In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.
~~Newt Gingrich, International Herald Tribune (1 Aug 1988), Paris

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
~~John P. Curran, Upon the Right of Election of Lord Mayor of Dublin (1790)

You know, most of the people I’ve known in this business, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, were good people, honest people, and they did what they thought was right. And I hope that I’ll live long enough to see American politics return to vigorous debates where we argue who’s right and wrong, not who’s good and bad. ~~Bill Clinton, comments at his official portrait unveiling (14 Jun 2004)

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
~~James F. Cooper, The American Democrat (1838)

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
~~James F. Cooper, The American Democrat (1838)

It is only common sense to recognize that the great bulk of Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, face many common problems and agree on a number of basic objectives.
~~Dwight Eisenhower

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule ? and both commonly succeed, and are right.
~~H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. ~~H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques (1920)

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. ~~Montesquieu

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~~ Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it. ~~P.J. O’Roarke

Democracy means not, “I am as good as you are,” but, “You are as good as I am.”
~~Theodore Parker

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
~~Lawrence J. Peter

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
~~George B. Shaw (and Voltaire)

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
~~John Simon

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
~~Art Spander

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.
~~Tom Stoppard

Half the countries of the world claim to be democratic, but being democratic is not enough, for a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.
~~Margaret Thatcher

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
~~E.B. White

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, it to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
~~John Adams

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
~~John Arbuthnot (1735)

The Republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it … This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.
~~Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free (1954)

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists. ~~Thomas Jefferson

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.
~~Fischer Ames, speech to the House of Representatives (1795)

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
~~Learned Hand, Speech, “I Am an American Day,” New York (21 May 1941)

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
~~John F. Kennedy

Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right.
~~John McCain

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or 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, quoted in the Kansas City Star (7 May 1918)

In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.
~~Adlai Stevenson (1952)

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
~~Peter Ustinov

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
~~Andy Warhol

Americans have a lazy habit of defining themselves in terms of what they are against rather than what they believe in.
~~Whitney A. Brown

You can always trust the Americans. in the end they will do the right thing, after they have eliminated all the other possibilities.
~~Winston Churchill

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.
~~Bill Clinton, First Inaugural Address (1993)

When we put aside partisanship, embrace the best ideas regardless of where they come from and work for principled compromise, we can move America not left or right, but forward.
~~Bill Clinton, news conference (8 Nov 1996)

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
~~Theodore Roosevelt

No easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.
~~Dwight Eisenhower, Parade (1962)

I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right. I do believe that right makes might and that if I am wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy.
~~Gerald R. Ford, announcing his decision to pardon Nixon (8 Sep 1974)

The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.
~~Newt Gingrich, asked about lobbyist contributions to his campaign (1989)

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating or complex — but Congress can.
~~Cullen Hightower

What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
~~Goethe, Spruche in Prosa, III, 225

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
~~Barry Goldwater

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
~~Alexander Hamilton

The function of government is to protect me from others. It’s up to me, thank you, to protect me from me.
~~Arthur Hoppe

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
~~Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)

The basis of effective government is public confidence.
~~John F. Kennedy

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?
~~V. I. Lenin

I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands “Thus saith the Lord,” it lies, and lies dangerously.
~~C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, “Is Progress Possible?” (1958)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
~~James Madison

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
~~Abraham Lincoln

You don’t promote the cause of peace by talking only to people with whom you agree.
~~Dwight Eisenhower, news conference (20 Jan 1957)

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.
~~Dwight Eisenhower, Time (25 Oct 1963)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
~~Mark Twain

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
~~Will Rogers

Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die.
~~Abraham Lincoln

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.
~~Abraham Lincoln

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.
~~Abraham Lincoln.

Our philosophy is best expressed, not in words, but in the choices one makes in daily living.
~~Eleanor Roosevelt

A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
~~James Madison, letter ot W. T. Barry (4 Aug 1822)

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
~~Mark Twain

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
~~Abraham Lincoln, letter ot Albert G. Hodges (4 Apr 1864)

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

As a nation we have lost our sense of tragedy, a recognition that bad things happen to good people. A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident, risks an even larger loss of life and liberty. ~~William Niskanen, For a Less Responsive Government (1996)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
~~P.J. O’Roarke

Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth without lodging somewhere in the government the still higher power of seeing that this power is used for and not against the people as a whole.
~~Theodore Roosevelt

In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.
~~Abraham Lincoln

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades — that of government.
~~Socrates

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
~~Voltaire

The first measure of a free society is NOT that its government performs the will of the majority. That’s what we had in 1930s Germany, 1950s Georgia, and 1980s Iran. The FIRST measure of a free society is that its government protects the just freedoms of its minorities AGAINST the preferences, will and caprice of the majority.
~~Jim Warren

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
~~George Washington

It requires time to bring honest men to think & determine alike even in important matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.
~~Samuel Adams, letter to Samuel Cooper (30 Apr 1776)

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
~~Clement Atlee, speech at Oxford (14 Jun 1957)

Like the course of the heavenly bodies, harmony in national life is a resultant of the struggle between contending forces. In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
~~Louis Brandeis

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
~~Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 479 (1928), dissent

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
~~Edmund Burke, speech on Conciliation with America (22 Mar 1775)

The single most dangerous thing you can do in politics is shut off information from people who don’t agree with you. Surround yourself with sycophants, listen only to the yea-sayers … then stick a fork in it, you’re done.
~~Molly Ivins, “Election Denial” (3 Apr 2001)

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
~~Henry Kissinger

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even when there is no river.
~~Nikita Kruschev

Most politicians are totally wusses with the ethical consideration of my cat begging for treats.
~~Kelley Leverich, Belief-L, 21 Jan 2000.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
~~Thomas Jefferson

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
~~Thomas Jefferson

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them [public offices], a rottenness begins in his conduct.
~~Thomas Jefferson

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.
~~Thomas Jefferson

Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.
~~Judith Martin, Miss Manners Rescues Civilization

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety.
~~H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (1923)

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races.
~~Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” (1894)

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
~~John Q. Adams

Thus, we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are *all* more or less wrong.
~~Thomas Merton, “New Seeds of Contemplation”

Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.
~~Blackburn Morley, Rousseau

I don’t care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.
~~William “Boss” Tweed

As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?
~~William “Boss” Tweed (1871)

When politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
~~Edward R. Murrow

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
~~Plato

All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.
~~James Reston, New York Times (1968)

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.
~~Will Rogers

Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.
~~Theodore Roosevelt

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
~~Robert L. Stevenson

Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
~~French proverb

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
~~H.L. Mencken, The Devil’s Dictionary

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
~~Louis Brandeis

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
~~John F. Kennedy

Persistence in a single view has never been regarded as a merit in political leaders.
~~Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares, I, 9, 21

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
~~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk (5 Oct 1830)

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable
~~John K. Galbraith, letter to President Kennedy (2 Mar 1962)

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.
~~Martini Gross, A Call for Revolution (1993)

You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
~~Malcolm X

Too often we … enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
~~John F. Kennedy

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
~~Dwight Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address (20 Jan 1953)

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
~~Dwight Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address (20 Jan 1953)

Law and Order is like patriotism — anyone who comes on strong about patriotism has got something to hide; it never fails. They always turn out to be a crook or an asshole or something.
~~Bill Mauldin

“My Country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
~~Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Defendant, “Defense of Patriotism” (1901)

Things equal out pretty well. Our dreams seldom come true, but then neither do our nightmares.
~~John F. Kennedy

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty in finding someone to blame your troubles on. And when you do find someone, it’s remarkable how often their picture turns up on your driver’s license.
~~P.J. O’Roarke

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
~~George B. Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Extreme opposites resemble the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead.
~~John F. Kennedy

It is hard to fight with anger; for what it wants it buys at the price of soul.
~~Heraclitus

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
~~Winston Churchill

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking the responsibility for what they know.
~~Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun (1951)

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
~~Josef Stalin

The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
~~Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun (1951)

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them others.
~~Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)

The middle of the road is all the usable surface. The extreme, right and left, are in the gutters.
~~Dwight Eisenhower

Responsibility is the price of greatness.
~~Winston Churchill

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.
~~Winston Churchill, The Second World War (1948-50), epigram, originally on WWI

The basis of effective government is public confidence.
~~John F. Kennedy

“I wish it need not have happened in my lifetime,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
~~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Personal responsibility is a difficult thing to ask for in a nation which has attempted to find a societal “root cause” for all things.
~~Shapley R. Hunter, on CompuServe (1992)

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
~~Eric Idle

Men are very apt to deceive themselves in generals, less so than in particulars.
~~Niccolo Macchiavelli

Men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
~~Niccolo Macchiavelli, The Prince, “In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith”

Although reason is common to all, the many act as if each had a private source of truth.
~~Heraclitus

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
~~George Bernard Shaw

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
~~Woodrow Wilson

Rights that do not flow directly from duty well performed are not worth having.
~~Gandhi, Harijan (6 Jul 1947)

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
~~Helen Keller

The only wise and safe course is to act from day to day in accordance with what one’s own conscience seems to decree.
~~Winston Churchill, The Second World War (1948)

What is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
~~Robert F. Kennedy

No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.
~~Ian E. Wilson

The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.
~~T.H. Huxley, Government

CALVIN: When I grow up, I’m not going to read the newspaper and I’m not going to follow complex issues and I’m not going to vote. That way I can complain when the government doesn’t represent me. Then, when everything goes down the tubes, I can say the system doesn’t work and justify my further lack of participation.
HOBBES: An ingeniously self-fulfilling plan.
~~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man.
~~Mark Twain

This is a time for courage and a time of challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a Party is not to our Party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.
~~John F. Kennedy, undelivered speech (22 Nov. 1963)