I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.  Abraham Lincoln

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short lived.  Abraham Lincoln

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

We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era-a permanent state of what I call violent peace.  Admiral Sir John Fisher

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.  Adolph Hiter

In war, truth is the first casualty.  Aeschylus

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.  Aesop

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.  Agatha Christie

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.  A. J. P. Taylor

Wars based on principle are far more destructive...the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.  Alan Watts

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.  William E. Gladstone, speech in Plumstead England, 1878

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.  Max Eastman, Masses, 1917

It is the duty of the liberal to protect and to extend the basic democratic freedoms.  Chester Bowles, New Republic, 1946

A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.  LeRoi Jones, "Tokenism: 300 years for five cents", Home, 1966

The principle of Conservatism has always appeared to me to be not only foolish, but to be actually felo de se:  it destroys what it loves, because it will not mend it.  Thomas Arnold, letter to James Marshall, 1840

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious.  They are conservatives after dinner.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, "New England Reformers", 1844

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.  Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons, 1845

The man for whom law exists-the man of forms, the conservative-is a tame man.  Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1851

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.  Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

The radical invents the views.  When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.  Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address, 1936

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?  Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.  Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, 1952

I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.  Kingsley Amis, Sunday Telegraph, 1967

I've got money so I'm a Conservative.  Roy Herbert Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet, recalled on his death, 1976

Conservatives do not worship democracy.  Sir Ian Gilmour, Inside Right, 1977

Let the punishment match the offense.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus, c 52 BC

More law, less justice.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Legibus, c 52 BC

Extreme justice is often unjust.  Jean Racine, The Thebaid, 1664

Rigid justice is the greates injustice.  Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Be just before you're generous.  Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, 1777

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.  Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, 1785

All punishment is mischief.  All punishment in itself is evil.  Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789

The art of policing is, in order not to punish often, to punish severly.  Napoleon I, letter to M. Fouche, 1805

It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.  Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, 1839

Justice is truth in action.  Joseph Joubert, Pensees, 1842

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.  Abraham Lincoln, speech in Washington D.C., 1865

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.  William E. Gladstone, speech in Plumstead England, 1878

Once the laws are just, then men will be just.  Anatole France, Monsieur Bergeret a Paris, 1900

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.  Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Olmstead vs. United States, 1928

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, radio and television address, 1957

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from the Birmingham Jail", 1963

Before going to prison I believed that criticism of the criminal justice system for its treatment of the poor was so much liberal bleating and bunk.  I was wrong.  G. Gordon Liddy, Connecticut, 1977

Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.  Aristotle, Politics, 343 BC

No law is quite appropriate for all.  Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, c 29 BC

Laws are like spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape.  Solon, quoted by Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, 3rd cen. AD

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.  William Shakespeare, Henry VI Part II, 1591

The more laws, the more offenders.  Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

The language of laws should be simple; directness is always better than elaborate wording.  Charles Louis de Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des lois, 1748

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.  Jean Jacque Rosseau, The Social Contract, 1762

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.  Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, 1765

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.  George Washington, letter to Col. Vanneter, 1781

The mass of the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.  Samuel Horsley, speech in the House of Lords, 1795

The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.  Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825

Good men must not obey the laws too well.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Politics" Essays: Second Series, 1844

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.  Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.  Walter Savage Landor, "Diogenes and Plato" Imaginary Conversations, 1824-1853

Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law.  Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.  Elbert G. Hubbard, Contemplations, 1902

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.  Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Northern Securities Company vs. United States, 1904

As in law so in war, the longest purse finally wins.  Mohandas K. Gandhi, lecture to the Bombay Provincial Cooperative Conference, 1917

The law must be stable, but it must not stand still.  Roscoe Pound, Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, 1922

Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.  Jean Anouilh, Anigone, 1942

Every so often, we pass laws repealing human nature.  Howard Lindsay, quoted by John Crosby New York Herald Tribune, 1954

The police must obey the law while enforcing the law.  Earl Warren, unanimous opinion, 1959

Law alone cannot make men see right.  John F. Kennedy, televised speech, 1963

There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.  Hubert H. Humphrey, speech in Williamsburg VA, 1965

Law is a reflection and a source of prejudice.  It both enforces and suggests forms of bias.  Diane B. Schulder, "Does the law Oppress Women?" Sisterhood Is Powerful, 1970

There are times when national interest is more important than the law.  Henry A. Kissinger, New York Times Magazine, 1976

There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those cannot.  Derek Bok, report to the Board of Overseers of Harvard Univ., 1983

The wicked are always surprised to find ability in the good.  Marquis de Vauvenargues, Reflexions et maximes, 1746

Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.  Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762

I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all.  John Adams, letter to Horatio Gates, 1776

In politics nothing is just save what is honest; nothing is useful except what is just.  Maximilien Robespierre, speech to the National Assembly, 1791

It is indeed a law of politicks as well as of physicks, that a body in action must overcome an equal body at rest.  Fisher Adams, The Dangers of American Liberty, 1805

The pendulum swung furiously to the left, because it had been drawn too far to the right.  Lord Macaulay, "Sir James Mackintosh" Edinburgh Review, 1835

There seem to me very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.  Sir Robert Peel, letter to Lord Radnor, 1846

I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.  Alex, Comte de Tocqueville, Recollections, 1893

Politics is the art of the possible.  Prince Otto von Bismarck, conversation with Meyer von Waldeck, 1867

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.  Mikhail Bakunin, "A Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy", 1871

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catchwords, devised to flatter rather than instruct.  James A. Garfield, speech at Hudson College, 1873

In politics there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.  Joseph Chamberlain, conversation with Arthur Balfour, 1886

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allow you to forgive yourself.  George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists", Man and Superman, 1902

Pratical politics consists in ignoring facts.  Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1906

Politics, as hopeful men practice it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.  H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fourth Series, 1924

Politics is not an art, but a means.  It is not a product, but a process.  Calvin Coolidge, quoted by Edward E. Whiting, Calvin Coolidge: His Ideals of Citizenship, 1924

Politics: Who Gets What, When, How.  Harold Lasswell, book title, 1936

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.  Mao Tse-tung, "On Protracted War", 1938

Power politics is the diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.  Ely Culbertson, Must We Fight Russia?, 1946

Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.  Albert Camus, Cahiers 1935-1942, 1962

The most may err as grossly as the few.  John Dryden, Absalom and Anchitophel, 1681

Our supreme government, the mob.  Horace Walpole 4th Earl of Oxford, letter to Horace Mann, 1743

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed and never will exist.  Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.  John Adams, proclomation to the Massachusetts Bay Council, 1774

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.  Jeremy Bentham, "A Fragment on Government", 1776

If government be founded in the consent of the people, it can have no power over any individual by whom that consent is refused.  William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1793

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1846

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Power" Conduct of Life, 1860

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.  William E. Gladstone, speech in Liverpool England, 1866

In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends.  Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 1873

Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody's equal.  Frederick Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1888

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.  George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists" Man and Superman, 1902

A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to great or a democracy.  Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Edward Grey, 1905

Americans ought ever be asking themselves about their concept fo the ideal republic.  Warren G. Harding, speech in Kansas City MO, 1923

The health of any democracy, no matter what its type or status, depends on a small technical detail: the conduct of elections.  Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1930

Democracy is not a static thing.  It is an everlasting march.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech in Los Angeles CA, 1935

Democracy: a mockery that mouths the words and obstructs every effort of an honest people to establish a government for the welfare of the people.  Father Charles E. Coughlin, Social Justice, 1938

Democracy is the superior form of government, because it is based on a respect for man as a reasonable being.  John F. Kennedy, Why England Slept, 1940

We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.  Louis D. Brandeis, Labor, 1941

In a democracy such as ours military policy is dependent on public opinion.  George C. Marshall, Yank, 1943

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time.  E. B. White, The Wild Flag, 1946

One of the evils of democracy is, you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not.  Will Rogers, The Autobiography of Will Rogers, 1949

Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and every where, good government.  Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, 1955

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.  Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., quoted Human Behavior, 1958

You have the God-given right to kick the government around-don't hesitate to do so.  Edmund S. Muskie, speech in South Bend IN, 1968

Television is democracy at its ugliest.  Paddy Chayefsky, The New York Times, 1976

You've got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.  Will Rogers, Good Gulf radio show, 1935

The Democratic Party at its worst is better for the country than the Republican Party at its best.  Lyndon B. Johnson, speech, 1955

(Democrats) can't get elected unless things get worse--and things won't get worse unless they get elected.  Jeane J. Kilpatrick, Time, 1985

Indeed there are some Republicans I would trust with anything--anything, that is, except public office.  Adlai E. Stevenson, campaign speech in Springfield, Ill, 1952

I have been tempted to make a good proposal to our Republican friends: that if they stop telling lies about us, we would stop telling the truth about them.  Adlai E. Stevenson, The New York Times, 1958

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.  Walter Lippmann, recalled on his death, 1974

For a workingman or woman to vote Republican this year is the same as a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.  Walter F. Mondale, Rolling Stone, 1976

(Republicans are) men of narrow vision who are afraid of the future and whose leaders are inclined to shoot from the hip.  Jimmy Carter, Time, 1980

Thou shalt not criticize other Republicans.  Ronald Reagan, Time, 1980

We're the party that wants to see an America in which the people can still get rich.  Ronald Reagan, remarks at a fundraising dinner in Washington, D. C., 1982

A man cannot part with his liberty and have it too, convey it by compact to the magistrate, and retain it himself.  John Locke, First Tract on Government, 1660

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.  Voltaire, Essay on Epic Poetry, 1727

Lean liberty is better than fat slavery.  Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.  Benjamin Franklin, reply to the Pennsylvania Assembly to the governor, 1755

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.  Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties, Jean Jacque Rosseau, The Social Contract, 1762

It is an universal maxim, that the more liberty is given to everything which is in a state of growth, the more perfect it will become.  Joseph Priestly, Essay on Government, 1768

The true danger is when liberty is whittled away, for expedients, and by parts.  Edmund Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.  Edmund Burke, speech in Buckinghamshire, 1784

What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?  Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William Smith, 1787

A people are free in proportion as they form their own opinions.  Samuel T. Coleridge, Prospectus The Watchman, 1796

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of liberty.  Georg W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 1832

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power.  Daniel Webster, speech in the U.S. Senate, 1834

See to the government.  See that the government does not acquire too much power.  Keep a check upon your rulers.  Do this, and liberty is safe.  William H. Harrison, speech in Dayton OH, 1840

I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.  Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

True liberty acknowledges and defends the equal rights of all men, and all nations.  Garrit Smith, speech in U.S. House of Representatives, 1854

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.  John S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself.  John S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Where the State begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa.  Mikhail Bakunin, Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism, 1868

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom-they are the pillars of society.  Henrik Ibsen, Pillars of Society, 1877

Liberty cannot live apart from constitutional principle.  Woodrow Wilson, Political Science Quarterly, 1887

Liberty produces wealth and wealth destorys liberty.  Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth, 1894

Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.  George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists" Man and Superman, 1902

Liberty, n.  One of Imagination's most precious possessions.  Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.  W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Legacy of John Brown", John Brown, 1909

The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.  Woodrow Wilson, speech in New York City, 1912

While the state exists there is no freedom; when there is no freedom there will be no state.  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and the Revolution, 1917

Radicalism is a label that is always applied to people who are endeavoring to get freedom.  Marcus Moziah Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, 1923

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privelege to be free.  Charles Evans Hughes, speech in Boston MA, 1925

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech at Temple University, 1936

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself.  Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Seasoned Timber, 1939

If liberty has any meaning if means the freedom to improve.  Philip Wylie, introduction Generation of Vipers, 1942

The ruling class or race must share their freedom with everyone in order to preserve it; or they must give it up.  Chester Bomar Himes, "Negro Martyrs are Needed" Crisis, 1944

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.  James Bryant Conant, Education in a Divided World, 1948