Timeless Inspiration: A Curated Collection of Political Quotes to Empower and Enlighten

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

- Teddy Roosevelt

"Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided… surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed it ourselves."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions & make them one people. I do not speak of their leaders who are incurable, but of the honest and well-intentioned body of the people."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

- Warren Bennis

"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, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."

- John Adams

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"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

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."

- John C. Maxwell

"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me … and by that time, there was no one to speak up for anyone."

- Martin Niemöller

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. 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. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else."

- Teddy Roosevelt

"For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing government. The nation looked to government but the government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that government is best which is most indifferent. For nearly four years you have had an administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

- Nelson Mandela

"Democracy means not ‘I’m as good as you are,’ but ‘You’re as good as I am.’"

- Theodore Parker

"The greatest praise government can win is, that its citizens know their rights and dare to maintain them."

- Wendell Phillips

"We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its state, its national conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on."

- Joseph Pulitzer

"Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating."

- Ronald Reagan

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

- John F. Kennedy

"The simple act of voting is the ground upon which the edifice of elective government rests ultimately."

- Judith N. Shklar

"Peace is more than just the absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom. And true peace dictates the recognition of human rights."

- Ronald Reagan

"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

- George Bernard Shaw

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

"The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race and ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The tyranny of a prince is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."

- Montesquieu

"A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over the long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Active citizens … are public meeting-goers and joiners of voluntary organizations who discuss and deliberate with others about the policies that will affect them all, and who serve their country not only as taxpayers and occasional soldiers, but by having a considered notion of the public good that they genuinely take to heart. The good citizen is a patriot."

- Judith N. Shklar

"Our children should learn the general framework of their government, and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."

- George Jean Nathan

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it, the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it, these forces met their master."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Inside the polling booth, every American man and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."

- Ken Blanchard

"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free men."

- Dwight Eisenhower

"Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"The basis of a democratic state is liberty."

- Aristotle

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

- Ralph Nader

"The freedom to express varying and often opposing ideas is essential to variety of conceptions of democracy. If democracy is viewed as essentially a process – a way in which collective decisions for a society are made – free expression is crucial to the openness of the process and to such characteristics as elections, representation of interests, and the like."

- Jonathan D. Casper

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

- Gen. George S. Patton

"At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man…is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well."

- Alan Keyes

"…the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

- Thomas Paine

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

"The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind – men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness."

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."

- Thomas Jefferson

"They that give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

- Benjamin Franklin

"That government is best which governs least."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves."

- John Locke

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

- Lord Acton

"It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership."

- Nelson Mandela

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

- Jack Welch

"Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs – in religion, literature, colleges and schools – democracy in all public and private life…"

- Walt Whitman

"Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

- John F. Kennedy

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

- Winston Churchill

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."

- Malcolm X

"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely."

- Franklin Roosevelt

"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be."

- Rosalynn Carter

"If majority governments … be the worst of governments, those who think and say so cannot be within the pale of the republican faith. They must either join the avowed disciples of aristocracy, oligarchy or monarchy, or look for a utopia exhibiting a perfect homogeneousness of interests, opinions and feelings nowhere yet to be found in civilized communities."

- James Madison

"Every friend of republican government ought to raise his voice against the sweeping denunciation of majority governments as the most tyrannical and intolerable of all governments. … The general question must be between a republican government in which the majority rule the minority, and a government in which a lesser number or the least number rule the majority. … Those who denounce majority government altogether … denounce at the time all republican government and must maintain that minority governments would feel less of the bias of interest or the seductions of powers."

- James Madison

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

- Woodrow Wilson

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

- Woodrow Wilson

"Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin."

- Wendell Willkie

"Political democracy … with all its threatening evils, supplies a training school for making first class men. It is life’s gymnasium, not of good only, but of all."

- Walt Whitman

"Act as if the whole election depended on your single vote, and as if the whole Parliament (and therein the whole nation) on the single person whom you now chose to be a member of it."

- John Wesley

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

- H.G. Wells

"The effect of [a representative democracy is] to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation…"

- James Madison

"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."

- Bill Gates

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

- Harry S. Truman

"Let us never forget that our constitutions of government are solemn instruments, addressed to the common sense of the people and designed to fix and perpetuate their rights and their liberties."

- Joseph Story

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority."

- William Howard Taft

"As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the lawgivers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end."

- Adlai Stevenson

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four."

- Gloria Steinem

"The object of government is not to change men from rational beings into puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled. … The true aim of government is liberty."

- Baruch Spinoza

"Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Whether in private or in public, the good citizen does something to support democratic habits and the constitutional order."

- Judith N. Shklar

"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

- Winston Churchill

"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who, have a right …and a desire to know"

- John Adams

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

- Thomas Jefferson

"There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature."

- Benjamin Rush

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

- Alexis deTocqueville

"All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual."

- Margaret Thatcher

"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."

- Isaac Asimov

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

- Isaac Asimov

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."

- Karl Marx

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- C. S. Lewis

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."

- Napoleon Hill

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

- Albert Einstein

"Making peace is harder than making war."

- Adlai Stevenson

"It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting."

- Tom Stoppard

"I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct—nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying."

- Mark Twain

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

- George Washington

"Democracy’s ceremonial, its feast, its great function, is the election."

- H.G. Wells

"There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People."

- Oscar Wilde

"It’s not healthy for a society if the people hate their own government."

- Garry Wills

"What is objectionable, 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 Kennedy

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred… but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another."

- Robert Kennedy

"The greatest politician must humble himself before the lowest constituent. The greatest governor must humble himself before the lowest peasant. The greatest president must humble himself before the lowest citizen. The greatest leader must humble himself before the lowest servant."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"The greatest leaders are the greatest servants."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"The leader has to be practical and a realist yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist."

- Eric Hoffer

"Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems."

- Brian Tracy

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Great leaders are not defined by the absence of weakness, but rather by the presence of clear strengths."

- John H. Zenger

"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes."

- Tony Blair

"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to farce or 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 knowledge gives."

- James Madison, 1788

"What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few—as we have learned to our sorrow. What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. 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 minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interest 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 has 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

"Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort."

- John F. Kennedy

"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1788

"It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea."

- Hubert H. Humphrey

"The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. … The nation blessed above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks."

- William James

"We are bound by ideals that teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these ideals. Every citizen must uphold them. … I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators. Citizens, not subjects. Responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character."

- George W. Bush

"Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements."

- Agnes Repplier

"If you have a plan, we want to hear it. Tell your community leaders, your local officials, your governor, and your team in Washington. Believe me, your ideas count. An individual can make a difference."

- George H.W. Bush

"Whenever war is declared, truth is the first casualty."

- Arthur Ponsonby

"If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what state of starvation will you prefer the grain to a vote?"

- Bertrand Russell

"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

- Teddy Roosevelt

"No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government from the highest to the lowest are bound to obey it."

- Samuel F. Miller

"I think sometimes our young people believe either that government is not a good thing to be involved in … or that if they did get involved, what they did wouldn’t make a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are around here as a nation after more than 224 years because more than half the time, more than half the people turned out to be right on the really big issues. There is no place in the world that is a better example of what free people can do when they work together … I frankly think that a lot of this fashionable cynicism is a kind of self-indulgent arrogance that has no place in America."

- Bill Clinton

"Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Equal rights for all, special privileges for none."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1780

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

- Robert M. Hutchins

"The more I study it [the Constitution], the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity."

- Calvin Coolidge

"Democracy is measured not by its leaders doing extraordinary things, but by its citizens doing things extraordinarily well."

- John Gardner

"Surely anyone who has ever been elected to public office understands that one commodity above all others, namely the trust and confidence of the people, is fundamental in maintaining a free and open political system."

- Hubert H. Humphrey

"Although the job of a Congressman involves several different roles, the main ones are as representative and legislator. As a representative, a member serves as an agent for his constituents, ensuring that their views are heard in Congress and that they are treated fairly by federal bureaucrats and other public officials. As a legislator, a member participates in the lawmaking process by drafting bills and amendments, engaging in debate, and attempting to build a consensus necessary to address our nation’s problems. Fulfilling these roles may sound easy, but can be enormously difficult."

- Lee Hamilton

"Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

- Ronald Reagan

"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

- Helen Keller, 1950

"vote that shakes the turrets of the land."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."

- John F. Kennedy

"[There is] no nobler motive for entering public life then the resolution not to be ruled by wicked men."

- Cicero

"As I would not be a slave, so would I not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

- Abraham Lincoln, 1858

"For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administered is best."

- Alexander Pope

"Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all reason that they are supported, maintained, and defended for all the human family. The essential characteristics of humanity are everywhere the same."

- Frederick Douglass

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

- Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864

"The effect of [a representative democracy is] to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation."

- James Madison

"A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. … A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states."

- Václav Havel

"In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful."

- John Marshall Harlan

"Nothing is more important to America than citizenship; there is more assurance of our future in the individual character of our citizens than in any proposal I, and all the wise advisers I can gather, can ever put into effect in Washington."

- Warren G. Harding

"Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

- Winston Churchill

"Government is a trust and the officers of the government are trustees, and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people."

- Henry Clay

"Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins."

- John Locke, 1690

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right."

- Learned Hand

"If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice."

- Learned Hand

"There is nothing wrong in America that can’t be fixed with what is right in America."

- Bill Clinton

"The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself—always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested in adversity."

- Jimmy Carter

"Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos."

- George W. Bush

"An essential element in the meaning of the common good among the members of a group is what the members would choose if they possessed the fullest attainable understanding of the experience that would result from their choice and its most relevant alternatives. Because enlightened understanding is required, I would propose to incorporate opportunities to acquire enlightened understanding as essential also to the meaning of the common good. Still further, the rights and opportunities of the democratic process are elements of the common good. Even more broadly, because the institutions of polyarchy are necessary in order to employ the democratic process on a large scale, in a unit as large as a country all of the institutions of polyarchy should also be counted as elements of the common good."

- Robert Dahl

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free."

- Clarence S. Darrow

"In the democratic vision, the freedom achieved by a democratic order is above all the freedom of self-determination in making collective and binding decisions: the self-determination of citizens entitled to participate as political equals in the making of the rules and laws under which they will live together as citizens."

- Robert Dahl

"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

"The prospects for stable democracy in a country are improved if its citizens and leaders strongly support democratic, ideas, values, and practices. The most reliable support comes when these beliefs and predispositions are embedded in the country's culture and are transmitted, in large part, for one generation to the next. In other words, the country possesses a democratic political culture."

- Robert Dahl

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

- Robert H. Jackson

"Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the ablest governments are frequently unable to create: namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it and which may, however unfavorable circumstances may be, produce wonders."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"To be a good leader, win minds; to be a great leader, win heart’s; and to be an extraordinary leader, win souls."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"He who has learned how to obey will know how to command."

- Solon

"A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible."

- Polybius

"Education is the mother of leadership."

- Wendell Willkie

"The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle."

- Frederick Lewis Donaldson

"If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded."

- Karl Marx

"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."

- Plato

"He who has great power should use it lightly."

- Seneca

"I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

- Sun Tzu

"Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little."

- Edmund Burke

"If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system.That's much more powerful than rebelling outside the system."

- Marie Lu

"Without deviation, without exception, without any ifs, buts, or whereases, freedom of speech means you shall not do something to people for views they have, express, speak, or write."

- Hugo L. Black

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."

- Publilius Syrus

"The major problem— one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

- Douglas Adams

"I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?"

- Benjamin Disraeli

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."

- Thomas Paine

"[T]he only title in our democracy superior to that of President [is] the title of citizen."

- Louis Brandeis

"Democracy is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles."

- E.B. White

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."

- E.B. White

"To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time."

- E.B. White

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

- Ayn Rand

"The first duty of a man is to think for himself"

- Jose Marti

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

- John Steinbeck

"Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it."

- Mark Twain

"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

- Louis Brandeis

"To encourage people, walk beside them. To inspire people, walk in front of them. To drive people, walk behind them. To lead people, walk with them."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"A good shepherd always feeds his sheep first, even when he himself is hungry."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny."

- William Blake

"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."

- Thomas Jefferson

"No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country … it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of the civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. … All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. … Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

- Edmund Burke

"The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation."

- Jimmy Carter

"The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge."

- John Jay Chapman

"The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. … The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes."

- G. K. Chesterton

"Of the three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and the people, the best is a mixture of all three for each one taken on its own can lead to disaster. Kings can be capricious, aristocrats, self-interested, and an unbridled multitude enjoying unwanted power more terrifying then a conflagration or a raging sea."

- Cicero

"A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you."

- Ramsey Clark

"Democracy is a small, hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences."

- James B. Conant

"To consider the Supreme Court of the United States strictly as a legal institution is to underestimate its significance in the American political system. For it is also a political institution, an institution, that is to say, for arriving at decisions on controversial questions of national policy. As a political institution, the court is highly unusual, not least because Americans are not quite willing to accept the fact that it is a political institution and not quite capable of denying it; so that frequently we take both positions at once. This is confusing to foreigners, amusing to logicians, and rewarding to ordinary Americans who thus manage to retain the best of both worlds."

- Robert Dahl

"Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and sleepiness are the law of absolute monarchies."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"If, in short, you are of the opinion that the principal object of government is not to confer the greatest possible glory upon the body of the nation, but to ensure the greatest enjoyment and to avoid the most misery to each of the individuals who compose it—if such be your desire, then equalize the conditions of men and establish democratic institutions."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The power vested in the American courts of justice of pronouncing a statute to be unconstitutional forms one of the most powerful barriers that have ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience."

- John Dewey

"If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation."

- Frederick Douglass

"Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty, there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population."

- Albert Einstein

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Here in America we are descended from revolutionists and rebels—men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having."

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Education … like democracy, is always in the making, forever incomplete, founded in possibilities."

- Maxine Greene

"The security of our nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know."

- Murray I. Gurfein

"The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited constitution."

- Alexander Hamilton

"The United States must of course remain militarily strong, but it should rely less on its military strength and more on the attraction of a free, open, and prosperous country that is strong enough and confident enough not to impose its will upon others and to allow diversity in the world's political and economic systems."

- Lee Hamilton

"While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."

- Charles Evans Hughes

"Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings."

- Robert M. Hutchins

"Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard."

- Robert H. Jackson

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1785

"The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens."

- Andrew Johnson, 1865

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

- John F. Kennedy

"I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer; hauling rails, at work on a flatboat—just what might happen to any poor man’s son. I want every man to have [a] chance."

- Abraham Lincoln, 1860

"If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained—then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people."

- Walter Lippmann

"The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others."

- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

"We are as great as our belief in human liberty—no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves."

- Archibald MacLeish

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

- James Madison

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

- James Madison

"It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part."

- James Madison

"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1790

"Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations … at the head of any new undertaking. Where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find as an association."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e., progressive development, a fundamental change."

- Mikhail Gorbachev

"We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different dreams."

- Jimmy Carter

"No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed … except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

- Magna Carta, 1215

"The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare."

- John Major

"Every democratic system evolves its own conventions. It is not only the water but the banks which make the river."

- Indira Gandhi

"Two cheers for democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism."

- E.M. Forster

"America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. … Our fate is to become one and yet many."

- Ralph Ellison

"Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals."

- Abba Eban

"Yet as I read the Constitution, one of its essential purposes was to take government off the backs of people and keep it off."

- William O. Douglas

"It is procedure that spells much of the difference between rule of law and rule by whim or caprice."

- William O. Douglas

"No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust."

- Demosthenes

"Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Nothing is so irresistible as the tyrannical power commanding in the name of the people, because while wielding the moral power which belongs to the will of the greater number, it acts at the same time with the quickness and persistence of a single man."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist."

- Edmund Burke

"It is extremely difficult in democratic times to draw nations into hostilities; but … it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war without embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced, their opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain quiet when the others stir. Wars therefore become more rare, but when they break out, they spread over a larger field."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Is it your object to refine the habits, embellish the manners, and cultivate the arts, to promote the love of poetry, beauty, and glory? Would you constitute a people fitted to act powerfully upon all other nations, and prepared for those high enterprises which, whatever be their results, will leave a name forever famous in history? If you believe such to be the principal object of society, avoid the government of the democracy."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"I think it may be admitted as a general and constant rule that among civilized nations the warlike passions will become more rare and less intense in proportion as social conditions are more equal."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism and we have no chain to it."

- Robert H. Jackson

"Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The stakes … are too high for government to be a spectator sport."

- Barbara Jordan

"In contrast to totalitarianism, a democracy can face and live with the truth about itself."

- Sidney Hook

"They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government."

- Thomas Hobbes

"Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege."

- Christopher Hill

"Power … is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end."

- Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

"The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual."

- Friedrich Hayek

"Compared with the political systems of other advanced democratic countries, ours is among the most opaque, complex, confusing, and difficult to understand."

- Robert Dahl

"I believe that America, the world's strongest democracy, ought not to be afraid of democracy, but we are."

- Lee Hamilton

"Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling."

- Abraham Lincoln, 1860

"Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge anyone to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws."

- Calvin Coolidge

"Salus populi suprema lex esto [the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law]."

- Cicero

"Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep."

- Rosa Luxemburg

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."

- Winston Churchill

"Bestowing representation on the basis of equal representation rather than population contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority must prevail."

- Alexander Hamilton

"Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

- James Madison, “Federalist 10”

"Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself."

- G.K. Chesterton

"Thinkers are leaders and true leaders are thinkers."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."

- Ernest Benn

"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State.... These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

- George Carlin

"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

- Mark Twain

"When the crowd is headed in the wrong direction, walk alone."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"A democracy must remain at home in all matters which affect the nature of her institutions."

- William Borah

"My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

- Abraham Lincoln

"What would you do, cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? … and when the law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide … the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast. Man’s laws, not God’s. And if you cut them down … do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake."

- Robert Bolt

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation."

- Hugo L. Black

"I like the noise of democracy."

- James Buchanan

"There is in the American Government … a want of unity. … The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way, the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water."

- James Bryce

"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed."

- William McKinley, March 4, 1897

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."

- G.K. Chesterton

"The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is."

- Karl Kraus

"The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied."

- Otto Kahn

"Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them."

- William R. Inge

"Self-sufficiency and a contempt of the science and experience of others are too prevailing traits of character in this country."

- Alexander Hamilton

"A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none."

- Joseph de Maistre

"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world."

- Benjamin Harrison

"No governmental action, no economic doctrine, no economic plan or project can replace that God-imposed responsibility of the individual man and woman to their neighbors."

- Herbert Hoover, 1931

"Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid."

- Bob Dylan

"So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable."

- Aldous Huxley

"A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped."

- Norman Mailer

"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money."

- Robert H. Jackson

"I often think it’s comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That’s born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative!"

- W.S. Gilbert

"The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people."

- Andrew Johnson

"Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present."

- Lyndon B. Johnson, July 21, 1964

"Freedom comes in individual packages."

- Shirley Boone

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."

- William S. Burroughs

"The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian."

- Robert Orben

"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."

- Ann Richards

"Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy."

- Irish blessing

"I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That’s the way our system works."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

"The military constitutes a specialized community governed by a separate discipline from that of the civilian."

- Robert H. Jackson

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1814

"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather boa!"

- Allen Ginsberg

"You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader."