I originally posted this on my old website on March 21, 2006. Some of these quotes were on the old Quotes page from November 2002 to November 26, 2004.
POLITICAL QUOTES
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
God grants Liberty only to those who live it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
You can support the troops but not the president.
--Tom DeLay (in 1999)
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President – or that we must stand by the President right or wrong – is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.
When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.
Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else.
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 the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed for than 8,000 people.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
The whole of government consists in the art of being honest.
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.
The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
I would rather be right than President.
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. --Thomas JeffersonNo man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.
You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere, if only out of curiosity.
The American people are very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.
Nothing will divide this nation more than ignorance, and nothing can bring us together better than an educated population.
Government investigations have always contributed more to our amusement than they have to our knowledge.
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing all the thinking.
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.
