Politician Quotes

Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the deserts bloom.

Adlai Stevenson II

Football, wherein is nothing but beastly fury, and extreme violence, whereof proceedeth hurt, and consequently rancour and malice do remain with them that be wounded.

With certain limited exceptions, the laws of physical science are positive and absolute, both in their aggregate, and in their elements, — in their sum, and in their details; but the ascertainable laws of the science of life are approximative only, and not absolute.

Elisha Bartlett

Peace purchased at the cost of any part of our national integrity is fit only for slaves, and even when purchased for such a price it is a delusion, for it cannot last.

Rest content, and give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright lustre of a court, and gone heavily even on the best-seeming fair ground…I know it bringeth little comfort on earth; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh this way to Heaven.

Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

I accept responsibility for everything that goes on in the MoD. But that does not mean I'm to blame for everything.

One of the guidelines which I have laid down throughout my chancellorship is no return to boom and bust.

At the heart of the moment, behold man as immortal, for the moment is infinite, when it is. The purity of the moment is made from the absence of time. Life of the moment, life without age of the moment which reigns, in the luminous arena of your duration man unfurls himself into infinity.

Cheikh Hamidou Kane

Flora with a liberal hand has scattered around us, her charming productions, they every where meet and allure us, enchanting us by their beauty, regaling us by their fragrance, and interesting us as much by their subservience to our luxuries and comfort, as to the necessary support and well-being of our life.

There was reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, might devour in turn each one of her children.

Pierre Vergniaud

Loopholes are not always of a fixed dimension. They tend to enlarge as the numbers that pass through wear them away.

Harold Lever, Baron Lever of Manchester

The homosexual Tom Driberg complaining about his wife to his friends:

She broke her marriage vows; she tried to sleep with me.

The increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a diminishing number of capitalist magnates, but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees.

Eduard Bernstein

The thing he proposes to buy is what cannot be sold—liberty.

The problem with guns that are hidden is you can't see their smoke.

I suspect that some of you would say 'A civilized nation is one that has railways, modern industry, organized army, tank, aircraft, etc., and an uncivilized nation is one that does not possess such things.' Or you would say that a civilized nation is one whose cities... have wide and paved streets, with multi-storey buildings, and so on.' Civilized nations, of course, do have such things, but I submit that these are products of civilization, not its essence. The essence of civilization is that people are mature, and the clearest sign of their maturity is that they observe the law.

Mohammad Ali Foroughi

No man should live where he can hear his neighbor's dog bark.

Nathaniel Macon

Of Adolf Hitler:

I, and many others who had interviews with him, were at first impressed by his sincerity, and later realized that he was sincere only in his belief that he was destined to rule the world.

Vernon Bartlett

Conquering kings their titles take
From the foes they captive make.

If we allow one of the finest and the richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace, and a blighting stigma upon our nationality.

We have dared to be free—let us continue free by ourselves, and for ourselves; let us imitate the growing child; his own strength breaks his leading-strings, which become useless and troublesome to him in his walk. What are the people who have fought us? What people would reap the fruits of our labors? And what a dishonorable absurdity, to conquer to be slaves!

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.

In the last Parliament, the House of Commons had more MPs called John than all the women MPs put together.

Statistics are like alienists — they will testify for either side.

Fiorello La Guardia

His [Warren Harding's] speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.

William G. McAdoo