Famous aphorisms in English

Law and Politics

 

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"Political economy" is a phrase consisting of two incompatible words.
Unknown

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
Alfred E. Wiggam

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age.
Robert Frost

A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
Unknown

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
Caskie Stinnett

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up "with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got."
Lord Greene

A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist, and too rich to be a communist.
Unknown

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
H. H. Munro

A man who seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.
Frederick the Great

A nation ... is just a society for hating foreigners.
Olaf Stapledon

A person who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal.
Unknown

A political campaign starts when a politician stops working and goes about making speeches about all the work he intends to do.
Unknown

A political machine is a united minority working against a divided majority.
Unknown

A reactionary is a man whose political opinions always manage to keep up with yesterday.
Unknown

A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.
Unknown

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Samuel Goldwyn

Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them.
Ambrose Bierce

All extremists should be taken out and shot.
Unknown

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce

America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.
Napoleon

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
Simon Cameron

Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no government at all.
Unknown

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy

Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains.
Winston Churchill

Anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
David Broder

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.
Marshall Lumsden

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
George Jean Nathan

Bad policies, stupid policies, gutless policies have real consequences.
Molly Ivins

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honoré de Balzac

Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth -- communism is the equal distribution of poverty.
Unknown

Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident.
Walter Goodman

Counterfeit exists because there is such a thing as real gold.
Jelaluddin Rumi

Crime does not pay... as well as politics.
A. E. Newman

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
Unknown

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence J. Peter

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
Henry Louis Mencken

Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
Ambrose Bierce

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
Yogi Berra

Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
I. F. Stone

Every nation has the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre

Every nation ridicules other nations -- and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer

For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
Bob Wells

Free people, remember this maxim: We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.
Kahlil Gibran

He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine

Hell hath no fury like a crooked politician denied his cut.
Benjamin J. Montalbano

How can you expect to govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
Mahatma Gandhi

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
Ashleigh Brilliant

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.
Voltaire

I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi

I'm left on the right issues and right on what's left. Now that's an issue I left right in front of you to debate.
David Epstein

I'm very critical of the U.S., but get me outside the country and all of a sudden I can't bring myself to say one nasty thing about the U.S.
Saul Alinsky

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

If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.
Thomas Jefferson

If half the lawyers would become plumbers, two of man's biggest problems would be solved.
Jr. Davis

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln

If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.
A. K. Griffin

If voting should change anything, there would be a law against it.
Unknown

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

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
Adlai Stevenson

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, "patriotism" is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche

In politics people work hard to get a job and do little after they get it.
Unknown

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
Christian Nevell Bovee

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
Mark Twain

It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.
M. Grundler

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson

It is odd, is it not, that a person's worth to society is measured by their wealth, when instead their wealth should be measured by their worth to society.
A. Cygni

It is people who live by the rules that are always hoping to get them changed.
Robert Harbison

It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most.
Walter Lippmann

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
David Hume

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not the opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed the same kind.
George Bernard

Jury: Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost

Justice is incidental to law and order.
J. Edgar Hoover

Legislators: Rape their wives and do two years. Kill their children and do five years. Steal their money and kiss your ass goodbye.
L. R. Powell

Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
Unknown

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.... While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.
Unknown

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.
J. A. Froude

Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry S Truman

Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.
Unknown

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
Lyman Beecher

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
William Cowper

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
John Peter Zenger

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Nowadays it's not as important for voters to know what a politician has done as what he or she hasn't done.
Edward Blakeman

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.
John F. Kennedy

People do not resist change -- they resist being changed.
Unknown

Philosophers have merely interpreted the world. The point is to change it.
Karl Marx

Politician: From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tête" ("head" or "face," as in "tête-à-tête": head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien," a person of two or more faces.
Martin Pitt

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
Nikita Khrushchev

Politics is a rotten egg; if broken, it stinks.
Unknown

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.
Edouard Herriot

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

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.
Unknown

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
Paul Valéry

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
Oscar Ameringer

Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many.
Howard Koch

Politics makes strange bedfellows stranger.
Unknown

Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it.
Unknown

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

Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
Unknown

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
Napoleon

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
Unknown

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
Art Spander

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
Henry Kissinger

The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe.
Benito Mussolini

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
Lao Tzu

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
Eugene McCarthy

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
Mahatma Gandhi

The people must fight for their laws as for their walls.
Heraclitus

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
Henry Cate

The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.
John Kane

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Hubert H. Humphrey

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.
Clark Kerr

There exists among humans no natural authority, only that established for convenience.
John Teeple

There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

This contract is so one-sided that I am astonished to find it written on both sides of the paper.
Jeffrey Miller

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

Those who rule the symbols rule us.
Alfred Korzybski

Thoughts cannot be censored.
Lassi Kämäri

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see Paradise as Hell; and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as Paradise.
Adolf Hitler

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
Otto von Bismarck

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
Unknown

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David Thoreau

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry Kissinger

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
Henry Louis Mencken

Vote early and vote often.
Al Capone

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce

Voters are people who have the God-given right to decide who will waste their money for them.
Unknown

We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
John Perry Barlow

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.
Jeff Marder

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?
Bertolt Brecht

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

When skunks duel, wind direction is everything.
Michael A. Loduha

When the government fears the people, we have liberty. When the people fear the government, we have tyranny.
Unknown

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.
Nelson Mandela

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.
Henry M. Robert

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell

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