Quotes about politics
529 quotes from 258 people
Communism is like prohibition, it’s a good idea but it won’t work.
Will Rogers1879–1935The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949)Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Remark on rejoining the Conservatives (1923 or 1924), reported in Kay Halle, Irrepressible Churchill (1966), pp. 52–53I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois (2 July 1932)“Socialism with a human face”? … Frankenstein also had a human face.
Garry Kasparovborn 1963Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
David Lloyd George1863–1945Speech in Wolverhampton (23 November 1918), quoted in The Times (25 November 1918), p. 13When the People have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton1803–1873Alice, or The Mysteries (1838), Book VI, Chapter VIf “pro” is the opposite of “con”, is “progress” the opposite of “congress”?
Gallagher1946–2022From the 1985 movie The Bookkeeper.War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
Ludwig von Mises1881–1973Nation, State, and Economy (1919), p 186The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Erich Fromm1900–1980Escape from Freedom (1941), Ch. 7If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.
Thomas Sowellborn 1930“Supreme Hypocrisy”, 29 March 2016Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980“On the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” Libération (22 June 1953)The more the state “plans” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
Friedrich Hayek1899–1992The Road to Serfdom (1944), Chapter 6: Planning and the Rule of LawThe revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Che Guevara1928–1967Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January-April 1965)The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975The New Yorker (12 September 1970)