The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

—Lord Acton

Politics is show business for ugly people.

—Paul Begala

In America you can say anything you want — as long as it doesn’t have any effect.

—Paul Goodman

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

 —Herbert Hoover

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

 —Peggy Noonan

The first rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.

—Molly Ivins

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

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

 —Plato

Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room.

—Christie Todd Whitman

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left for irresponsible action.

 —George Washington

We are not afraid to trust 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

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.

—Frederick Douglass

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

—Felix Frankfurter

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power — that is not easy.

—Aristotle

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

 —Laurence J. Peter