1) "A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued, but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." -- Samuel Adams

2) "The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins - that is, until the late evening newscast, when suddenly we are plunged into the world as it is. Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is a rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest. Two examples would be the priest who wants to be a bishop and bootlicks and politicks his way up, justifying it with the rationale, 'After I get to be bishop I'll use my office for Christian reformation,' or the businessman who reasons, 'First I'll make my million and after that, I'll go for the real things in life,' Unfortunately one changes in many ways on the road to the bishopric or the first million, and then one says, 'I'll wait until I'm a cardinal and then I can be more effective,' or 'I can do a lot more after I get two million' - and so it goes. In this world, laws are written for the lofty aim of 'the common good' and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed." -- Saul Alinsky

3) "Democracy is a slow process of stumbling to the right decision instead of going straight forward to the wrong one." -- Anonymous

4) "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

5) "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

6) "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

7) "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

8) "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." -- Gerald R. Ford

9) "Indeed, as libertarians are fond of pointing out, pretty much all laws come with the implicit threat of violence. Don’t believe me? Refuse to obey even the most picayune law and eventually a man in uniform with a gun on his hip is going to come talk to you about it." -- Jonah Goldberg

10) "Complexity is a subsidy. The more complex government makes society, the more it rewards those with the resources to deal with that complexity, and the more it punishes those who do not." -- Jonah Goldberg

11) "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." -- Robert Heinlein

12) "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer

13) "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually, the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil… Common hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements. To share a common hatred, with an enemy even, is to infect him with a feeling of kinship, and thus sap his powers of resistance… Again, like an idea deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent." -- Eric Hoffer

14) "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

15) "Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power." -- Aldous Huxley

16) "That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves." -- Thomas Jefferson

17) "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson

18) "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth - some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." -- Michael Kinsley

19) "To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil." -- Charles Krauthammer

20) "And many writers have imagined for themselves republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good." -- Niccolo Machiavelli

Culturcidal by John Hawkins

The 40 Best Quotes About Politics

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