Politician Quotes

Defending the Constitution is always important. That duty is even more vital today, when the president and top administration officials argue that the executive branch may break the law whenever the president deems it to be necessary in a time which he declares to be wartime.

There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.

David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty

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

Rugby may have many problems, but the gravest is undoubtedly that of the persistence of summer.

Not thus HYPERBOLA; — with subtlest art The blue-eyed wanton plays her changeful part; Quick as her conjugated axes move Through every posture of luxurious love, Her supportive limbs with easiest grace expand....

It is a revolution; a revolution of the most intense character; in which belief in the justice, prudence, and wisdom of secession is blended with the keenest sense of wrong and outrage, and it can no more be checked by human effort for the time than a prairie fire by a gardener's watering pot.

Judah P. Benjamin

I'm here tonight, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an optimistic American who understands that we must come together behind the one man who can lead the way forward in these challenging times: my president, our president, Barack Obama!

The Bush National Security Strategy is the imperial edict of a superpower out to exploit its present supremacy to make itself permanent Lord Protector of the universe.

Now, the vicissitudes that afflict the individual have their source in society. It is this situation that has given currency to the phrase social forces. Personal relations have given way to impersonal ones. The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control. The study of how it is to be done is the function of politics.

We can show the way. We can make dust — or eat dust.

The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.. are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.

William Blackstone

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

Taipei is not only the nation's capital, but also the engine of its economy. Yet, in the past few years the city's economy has shrunk and has been surpassed by New Taipei City.

It is appropriate here to recall that the so-called Dark Ages began with the flight of the individuals into the protection of lords or chapters and came to an end when the individual again found it to his advantage to set forth on his own. We live at a time when everything conspires to push the individual into the fold.

Bertrand de Jouvenel

Good jests ought to bite like lambs, not dogs: they should cut, not wound.

Charles II of England

Over the postwar years, we have granted to the elite and secret police within our system vast new powers over the lives and liberties of the people. At the request of the trusted and respected heads of those forces, and their appeal to the necessities of national security, we have exempted those grants of power from due accounting and strict surveillance.

A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society.

Natan Sharansky

It is magnificent, but it is not war; it is madness.

Whether one agrees with the Communist Party or not, one must at least know the truth about it. One must not permit his ideas to be shaped by the hysteria which now passes as a "crusade against Communism."... For example, the canard that every Communist has his pockets lined with "Moscow gold." If that were true, one could be sure that there would scarcely be any room in our party for workers. The capitalists, to whom gold is god of the universe, would crowd them out.

Benjamin J. Davis Jr.

There is a sacred realm of privacy for every man and woman where he makes his choices and decisions-a realm of his own essential rights and liberties into which the law, generally speaking, must not intrude.

Geoffrey Fisher

First of all, I think the United States is the greatest country in the world to invest in. And we see that. And we see that money is pouring into the United States for those reasons. So I think we're really going to be focused on economic growth and creating jobs. And that's really going to be the priority.

First, there are good people out there; they just don't make so much of a racket. Second, if you don't make waves, then the bad guys don't get washed overboard. And third, nobody bothers to bad-mouth you unless they're afraid of you. So think of it as kind of a compliment.

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

Miracles happen. They have happened to me and they are happening to you. You need only look to the people in your lives in order to see them.

The commonest error made in relation to poetry is that it consists simply in verse-making. Many confound the casket of meter and rhyme with the jewel of thought which it encloses, and, perhaps, in some instances, after close investigation, they have found the casket empty and turned away with feelings of disappointment and disgust.

Orson F. Whitney