One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemy—all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. […] Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

-- George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia

Randy brings the quotes on Social Change.

The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine.
-- George Washington

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
-- Thomas Paine

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln

More Quotes on Religion from Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, Einstein, and others.

On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known....[T]he provisions of the [Controlled Substances] Act permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance." - Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22] (September 6, 1988), p. 57.

Marijuana is self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?
- - P. J. O'Rourke

Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader.
-- Plato

Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.
-- Justice Louis Brandeis

In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.
-- Pastor Martin Niemoller

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern.
-- William Blake (1757-1828)

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle"

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382,442

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
-- Seneca, A.D. 65

Silence gives consent.
-- Canon Law

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
-- Thomas Paine

It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
-- James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook.
-- U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel
-- H.L. Mencken

Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction . . . if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
-- Alexander Hamilton, 1804

If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states, then the juror has accepted the exercise of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty.
-- Justice Theophilus Parsons, 1788

It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
-- John Adams, 1771

There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.
-- Lysander Spooner, 1852

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
-- U.S. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. [Who will police the police?]
-- Latin proverb

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- Thomas Carlyle

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood.
-- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, passed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December, 1948

We can never solve our significant problems from the same level of thinking we were at when we created the problems.
-- Albert Einstein

Don't hate the media, become the media.
-- Jello Biafra

"You couldn't lead a monkey to a banana raffle."

-- Max Stone, Rebel Extreme Trillionaire, Sealab 2021

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking." William Butler Yeats

"Better to be the architect of something you can endorse than the placard waving protagonist standing in the rain." Tim Woods, Communciations Consultant

"The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead." Gen. George S. Patton

"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." Harry S. Truman

"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve." Tom Landry

"If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking." Lyndon B. Johnson

"Whenever a fellow tells me he is bipartisan I know he is going to vote against me." Harry Truman

"It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can." Jean- Jacque Rousseau

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Winston Churchill

"I will make him an offer he can’t refuse." Mario Puzo

"The civilities of the great are never thrown away." Dr. Johnson

"Modest proposals are better than grand designs: they serve the political function of registering concerns, but are too small to provoke opposition." Economist

"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in." Lyndon Johnson

"Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes." George Bernard Shaw

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals – they always come in handy." Stanislaw Lec

"Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth." Benjamin Disraeli

"Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do." La Bruyere

"The golden rule has no place in a political campaign." John James Ingalls

"Human kind cannot bear too much reality." T. S. Elliot

"Hell, I never vote for anybody. I always vote against. "W.C. Fields

"Once again we saw the phenomena of the three kinds of citizens in this country: The activists who campaign hard, the regular citizen who votes but does not otherwise participate and the truly tuned out who never even knows know when an election has been called.” Rod Love, Canadian Alliance campaign strategist

"I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smell like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket." Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you." George Bernard Shaw

"In politics, nothing is contemptible." Benjamin Disraeli

"Washington, D.C. is a city lying in the gutter, wallowing in hypocrisy. It has become a bizarre sinkhole of character assassination and smirking self-righteousness. It will eagerly cast not only the first stone but any other rocks that it can lay it hands on." Wall street Journal Editorial

"Men are joined by conviction, sundered by opinion." Goethe

"Even a little dog can piss on a big building." Jim Hightower

"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct." Benjamin Disraeli

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" Abraham Lincoln

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Chinese Proverb

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." Sir Winston Churchill

"The much hyped leaders debates are just a political black hole that consume time, money, energy, resources, staff and adrenalin, and rarely produce anything other than a mush tie, allowing all the spin doctors to claim a phony victory.” Rod Love, Canadian Alliance campaign strategist

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” Plutarch

"In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all an enemy." Brian Mulroney

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in." H.R. Haldeman

"If you can’t lick ‘em in the alley, you can’t beat ‘em on the ice." Conn Smythe

"There are no small steps in great affairs." Cardinal De Retz

"Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics." Thomas Jefferson

"Politics are a labyrinth without a clue." John Adams

"All great changes are irksome to the human mind, especially those which are attended with great dangers and uncertain effects. " John Adams

"They worry one another like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts." John Adams

"Commitments the voters don't know about can't hurt you." Ogden Nash

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." Napoleon Bonaparte

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." Charles de Gaulle

"Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war." Maria Montessori

"Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" 'til you can find a stick." Wynn Catlin

"Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds." Henry Adams

"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous." William Proxmire

"Lighthouse: A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician." Anonymous

"No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country." George Smith Patton

"Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source." Ron Nesen

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

"Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country choose a second rate president." Richard M. Nixon

"Our elections are free--it's in the results where eventually we pay." Bill Stern

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers." Nikita Khruschev

"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head." George Wallace

"If Communism goes, I've still got the U.S. House of Representatives." Robert Novak

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM." Lyndon B. Johnson

"In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge." J. G. C. Minchin

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." Mark Twain

"I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough." Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate

"Politics is a game requiring great coolness." Sir John A Macdonald,
Canadian Prime Minister

"The decline of official discourse into cream of bleat has behind it reasons that go beyond the politician's genetic instinct for the median. There is, above all, the odd influence of television. The politicos prefer it to print because they don't get edited. But it's become comical to watch the TV people shooting one "tough" question after another at guests who bat them away like fruit flies on a steaming peach pie. The morning Sunday shows used to make news but rarely do in a big way anymore. " Daniel Hennigar, Wall Street Journal

"Today's headlines are tomorrow's birdcage drop-sheets." Anonymous

"Noise proves nothing--often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid." Mark Twain

"I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half-hour looking at my face on their television screens." Dwight Eisenhower

"Experts are just trained dogs." Albert Einstein

"The way my luck is running, if I were a politician I would be an honest man." Rodney Dangerfield

"Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." John F. Kennedy

"Great obstacles make great leaders." Cree leader, Billy Diamond

"We have two types of politicians-the incapable and those capable of anything." Slogan written on a wall in Paraguay, according to the Economist

"There will be no silence from Canada. Our friendship has no limit. Generation after generation we have traveled many difficult miles together side by side." Prime Minister Jean Chrétien

"We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right." Nelson Mandela

"Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often." Mark Twain

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." Alexander Hamilton

"We have seen a growing mismatch between the command of media communication shown by the most talented politicians, and the halting, uneven progress which they can deliver through the machinery of government." Tom Bentley, Director of Demos, a British Think Tank

"The more successful a political party, the more winning its ways, the less of its time is spent casting about for policy or determining it principles. But, political parties with principles or even without them, have a common need for money; someone has to pay for the television commercials." Dalton Camp, Canadian political commentator

"In joining a political party, people shouldn't have to swear everlasting agreement with every jot and tittle of their party's policy manifesto. Debate, disagreement, argument, are good for democracy not bad." William Watson, Columnist & McGill University Professor

"Your job is to work as hard as you can in government, and to work as hard as you can in your ridings for the people you represent, because the time will come when you will not want me to come into your ridings. The time will come when I am so personally unpopular that you won't want help from me....and then at that moment, when I am not able to help, your chances of being re-elected are going to depend entirely on your own efforts." David Peterson, Former Ontario Premier

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' And one says, 'This is new, and therefore better.'" Dean Inge

"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience." George Bernard Shaw

"If politicians lived on praise and thanks they'd be forced into some other line of business." Edward Heath, British Prime Minister

"A week is a long time in politics." Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister

"There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible." Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British Prime Minister

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." Sir Winston Churchill

"The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion." Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister

"If I am a great man, then all great men are frauds." Andrew Bonar Law, British Prime Minister

"I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained." Arthur James Balfour, British Prime Minister

"There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics." Sir Robert Peel, British Prime Minister

"The decline of official discourse into cream of bleat has behind it reasons that go beyond the politician's genetic instinct for the median. There is, above all, the odd influence of television. The politicos prefer it to print because they don't get edited. But it's become comical to watch the TV people shooting one "tough" question after another at guests who bat them away like fruit flies on a steaming peach pie. The morning Sunday shows used to make news but rarely do in a big way anymore. " Daniel Hennigar, Wall Street Journal

"Today's headlines are tomorrow's birdcage drop-sheets." Anonymous

"Noise proves nothing--often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid." Mark Twain

"I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half-hour looking at my face on their television screens." Dwight Eisenhower

"Experts are just trained dogs." Albert Einstein

"The way my luck is running, if I were a politician I would be an honest man." Rodney Dangerfield

"Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." John F. Kennedy

"Great obstacles make great leaders." Cree leader, Billy Diamond

"We have two types of politicians-the incapable and those capable of anything." Slogan written on a wall in Paraguay, according to the Economist

"There will be no silence from Canada. Our friendship has no limit. Generation after generation we have traveled many difficult miles together side by side." Prime Minister Jean Chrétien

"We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right." Nelson Mandela

"Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often." Mark Twain

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." Alexander Hamilton

"We have seen a growing mismatch between the command of media communication shown by the most talented politicians, and the halting, uneven progress which they can deliver through the machinery of government." Tom Bentley, Director of Demos, a British Think Tank

"The more successful a political party, the more winning its ways, the less of its time is spent casting about for policy or determining it principles. But, political parties with principles or even without them, have a common need for money; someone has to pay for the television commercials." Dalton Camp, Canadian political commentator

"In joining a political party, people shouldn't have to swear everlasting agreement with every jot and tittle of their party's policy manifesto. Debate, disagreement, argument, are good for democracy not bad." William Watson, Columnist & McGill University Professor

"Your job is to work as hard as you can in government, and to work as hard as you can in your ridings for the people you represent, because the time will come when you will not want me to come into your ridings. The time will come when I am so personally unpopular that you won't want help from me....and then at that moment, when I am not able to help, your chances of being re-elected are going to depend entirely on your own efforts." David Peterson, Former Ontario Premier

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' And one says, 'This is new, and therefore better.'" Dean Inge

"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience." George Bernard Shaw

"If politicians lived on praise and thanks they'd be forced into some other line of business." Edward Heath, British Prime Minister

"A week is a long time in politics." Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister

"There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible." Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British Prime Minister

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." Sir Winston Churchill

"The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion." Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister

"If I am a great man, then all great men are frauds." Andrew Bonar Law, British Prime Minister

"I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained." Arthur James Balfour, British Prime Minister

"There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics." Sir Robert Peel, British Prime Minister

"All those men have their price." (His opinion of his fellow parliamentarians) Sir Robert Walpole , British Prime Minister

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it." Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, 'The Elder', British Prime Minister

"I hate liberality - nine times out of ten it is cowardice, and the tenth time lack of principle." Henry Addington, British Prime Minister

"Great men are very apt to have great faults; and the faults appear the greater by their contrast with their excellencies." Gerald J. Simmons

"Those of you who come in with me now will receive a big piece of the pie. Those of you who delay, and commit yourselves later, will receive a smaller piece of pie. Those of you who don't come in at all will receive – Good Government!” Huey Long

"If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve." General Tecumseh Sherman

"We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate." Kim Hubbard

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

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." John Galbraith

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop

"Compare the emotional vocabulary available to a leader (confidence, satisfaction, indignation) with the emotions not permitted (regret, embarrassment, dread, angst, mortification, anger, surprise, wonder, doubt), and it becomes apparent why perfectly normal people, upon entering public life, transform into cartoons - because they are not free to express what a normal person would feel in their situation." John MacLachlan Gray, Canadian Playwright

"Until relatively recently, mass political movements were still about basic rights of food, shelter, education and self sufficiency. The reasons fewer people vote these days, or turn up for political meetings, is that for the vast majority of us those rights have been fulfilled. These days it’s in the adverts for mobile phones or foreign holidays where phrases like "Join the Revolution!" and "Cry Freedom!" are bandied about for a generation which knows nothing of their provenance. Just as now we have luxury illnesses to replace real ones, so now we have luxury politics." John Diamond, British Journalist

"The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie." Theodore H. White

"The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought." John Jay Chapman

"Political work is the life-blood of all economic work. " Mao Tse-Tung

"We often repent of what we have said, but never, never, of that which we have not." Thomas Jefferson

"Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist." Jim Hightower

"A fanatic is one who won't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." Cato the Elder

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." Thomas Jefferson

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." Indira Gandhi

"Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands - though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity." Bernard Crick

"Finality is not the language of politics." Benjamin Disraeli

"There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail." Will Rogers

"When we win on an issue we call it leadership. When we lose, we call it politics. Practicing politics simply means increasing your options for effective results." John Eldred

"Never vote for the best candidate, vote for the one who will do the least harm." Frank Dane

"Office tends to confer a dreadful plausibility on even the most negligible of those who hold it." Mark Lawson

"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 of them." Mark Twain

"Too bad ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." Henry Kissinger

"When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property." Thomas Jefferson

"In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably. "Goethe

"Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few." Jonathan Swift

"The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation." Bernard Crick

"Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their ‘politics’. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states. For most people, political activity is a secondary activity – that is to say, they have something else to do beside attending to these arrangements. But the activity is one which every member of the group who is not a child nor a lunatic has some part and some responsibility." Michael Oakshott

"There is no more great men; there is only great committees." Marshal McLuhan

"Politics, a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles." Ambrose Pierce

"If somebody’s gonna stab me in the back, I wanna be there." Allan Lamport

"In politics the choice is constantly between two evils." John Morley

"Gratitude is not a normal feature of political life." Lord Kilmuir

"No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity." Franklin Roosevelt

"Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupations of free men, and its existences is a test of freedom." Bernard Crick

"Politics makes strange post-masters." Kin Hubbard

"Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions." La Rochefoucauld

"Politics is not like an ocean voyage or a military campaign… something which leaves off as soon as reached. It is not a public chore to be gotten over with. It is a way of life." Plutarch

"Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters." Bob Dylan

"Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good." Bernard Crick

"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop." P. J. O’Rourke

"Some of you have money, while some are poor you know.
If you send me to Washington, I’ll just divide the dough." Betty Boop

"Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature." Kim Hubbard

"After long experience of politics, I have never found that there is any inhibition caused by ignorance as regards criticism." Harold Macmillan

"Practical politics consists in ignoring facts." Henry Brooke Adam

"All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." Harry Truman

"Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans." Goethe

"The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself." Bernard Crick

"I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow." Woodrow Wilson

"There is every reason to believe that our system will soon attain the highest degree of perfection of which human institutions are capable." President James Monroe

"The ruling quality of leaders adaptive capacity, is what allows true leaders to make the nimble decisions that bring success. Adaptive capacity is also what allows some people to transcend the setbacks and losses that come with age and to reinvent themselves again and again." Warren G. Bennis

"A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom." Bob Dylan

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and Third by experience, which is the bitterest." Confucius

"Patience is the companion of wisdom." St. Augustine

"A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail." John Foster Dulles

"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world." George Washington Carver

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice." Confucius

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest."Confucius

"The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved." William Jennings Bryan

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." Sir Winston Churchill

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence." George Washington

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." Francis Bacon

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit." Aristotle

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." Anatole France

"Opportunity doesn’t knock. You knock, opportunity answers." Proverb

"The harder you work, the luckier you get." Gary Player

"In simplest terms, a leader is one knows where he want to go and gets up and goes." John Erskine

"Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line." Warren G. Bennis

"Nothing succeeds like success." Alexandre Dumas

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." Abraham Lincoln

"We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it." Joseph Addison

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their lives
Is bound in the shallows and in miseries…
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures." Shakespeare

"Fortune may have yet a better success in reserve for you and they who lose today may win tomorrow." Cervantes

''I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.'' George Burns

"Victory belongs to the most persevering." Napoleon Bonaparte

"We must become the change we want to see in the world." Mohandas Gandhi

''We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.'' Herman Melville

''We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.'' - Aristotle

''I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.'' Bill Cosby

''Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.'' Plato

"Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use." IBM founder Thomas J. Watson

"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter." Edmund Burke

"Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient; often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship." James Russell Lowell

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." Thomas Jefferson

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." Albert Einstein

"I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand." Louis Armstrong.

"Well done is better than well said." Benjamin Franklin

"Recognition is the greatest motivator." - Gerard C. Eakedale

"When I want your opinion I'll give it to you." Laurence J. Peter

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

"We cannot solve today's problems using the mindset that created them." Albert Einstein

"Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass." Confucius

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." Linus Pauling

"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit." D. Elton Trueblood

"Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far." Euripides

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Calvin Coolidge

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity." Louis Pasteur

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it." John Ruskin

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." Robert Louis Stevenson

"To see things in the seed, that is genius." Lao-tzu

"We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects." Alexis de Tocqueville

"A few observations and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth." Alexis Carrel

"Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life." Goethe

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being." Goethe

"Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman." Lord Chesterfield

"You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them." Malcolm Forbes

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in." Alan Alda

"A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope." Epictetus

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." Bertrand Russell

"The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else." Martina Navratilova

"They also serve who only stand and wait." John Milton

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder." Aldous Huxley

"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for." Dostoyevsky

"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one." J. Russell Lynes

"It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others." John Andrew Holmes


"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." Carl W. Buechner

"We should measure affection, not like youngsters by the ardour of its passion, but by its strength and constancy." Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." Carl Sandburg, poet (1878-1967)

"There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts." George Matthew Adams

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears." Marcus Aurelius

"The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse." Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." W. Edwards Deming

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself." Eleanor Roosevelt

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde

"Education: That which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge." Mark Twain

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro". Hunter Thompson

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." Vaclav Havel

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater." William Hazlitt

"One of the criteria by which we measure the worth of public figures is whether or not their brand of bull is in step with the current Zeitgeist." John MacLachlan Gray, Canadian Playwright

"The common man, no matter how sharp and tough, actually enjoys having the wool pulled over his eyes, and makes it easier for the puller." P.T.Barnum

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating." Oscar Wilde.

"I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards." W. Somerset Maugham

"The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests." Gail Sheehy

"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he." Karl Kraus

"Let sleeping dogs lie." Sir Robert Walpole, British Prime Minister

"To speak, and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks." Ben Johnson.

"Obviously we don't have 300 million people. We haven't got a big army. We don't have Hollywood. We're a medium small-sized country. We have to do what medium small-sized countries do, which—even though we're not smarter than other people—is to make ourselves seem to be smarter. We have to work harder and know more than other people. John Ralston Saul

"I have not the particular shining bauble or feather in my cap for crowds to gaze at or kneel to, but I have the power and resolution for foes to tremble at." Oliver Cromwell

"The longer the title, the less important the job." George McGovern

"You are remembered for the rules you break." Douglas MacArthur

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." Sam Levenson

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." Winston Churchill

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." W B Yeats

"When I have to choose between voting for the people or the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget." Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King Jr.

"One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant." John Locke

"When I look at myself, I’m devastated; when I compare myself with others, I’m consoled." Old Québecois saying

"If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory." Benjamin Disraeli

"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it." Thomas Jefferson

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." Goethe

"All rising to great place is by a winding stair." Francis Bacon

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

"I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn’t inhale." Adlai Stevenson

"It is not necessary to understand things to argue about them." Pierre de Beaumarchais

"A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars." Talleyrand

"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." Napoleon

"To plunder, to lie, to show your arse, are three essentials for climbing high." Aristophanes

"Fortune rarely accompanies anyone to the door." Gracian Proverb

"We all have enough strength to endure the troubles of others." La Rochefoucauld

"In order to succeed in the world people do their upmost to appear successful." La Rochefoucauld

"The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices." La Rochefoucauld

"To praise princes for virtues they do not possess is to insult them without fear of consequences." La Rochefoucauld

"For God’s sake, don’t say yes until I’ve finished talking." Darryl Zanuck

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." Ronald Reagan

"I will not regret leaving what has become a totally dysfunctional institution. I will not miss the thrill of making well-researched speeches in a virtually empty room. I will not miss working long hours on irrelevant ministerial guided committees. I will not miss the posturing." Retiring speech of Canadian Alliance M.P., Lee Morrison

"If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve." General Tecumseh Sherman

"We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate." Kim Hubbard

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

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." John Galbraith

"The Prime Minister, a specialist in calling in the locksmith after the horses had fled - the whole herd in fact - and the barn in ruins, ended the week with a great raft of ethics proposals for cabinet, leadership candidates, backbenchers and lobbyists. I think it is more than fair to ask: Why wait for the middle of his third term to institute what the public would have welcomed at the beginning of his first?" Rex Murphy, Canadian Broadcaster

"One moment it's a cathedral, at another time there is no words to describe it when it ceases, for short periods of time, to have any regard for the proprieties that constitute not only Parliament, but its tradition. I've seen it in all its greatness. I have inwardly wept over it when it is degraded." Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker

"Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole." Edmund Burke

"Often the experts make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs." Clement Richard Attlee, British Prime Minister

"There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons." Herbert Henry Asquith, British Prime Minister

"There are two supreme pleasures in life. One is ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of office from his Sovereign. The real pleasure comes when he hands them back." The Earl of Rosebery, British Prime Minister

"[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it." William Ewart Gladstone, British Prime Minister

"The duty of an Opposition is very simple... to oppose everything, and propose nothing." The Earl of Derby, British Prime Minister

"What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong." William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, British Prime Minister

"An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them." (After his first Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister:) Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, British Prime Minister

"The House of Commons is a great unwieldy body, which requires great Art and some Cordials to keep it loyal." Henry Pelham, British Prime Minister

"I shall not... think the demands of the people a rule of conduct, nor shall I ever fear to incur their resentment in the prosecution of their interest. I shall never flatter their passions to obtain their favour, or gratify their revenge for fear of their contempt." Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, British Prime Minister

"I can hardly keep wondering at my own folly in thinking it worthwhile to leave my books and garden, even for one day's attendance in the House of Commons." William Wyndam Grenville, Lord Grenville, British Prime Minister


"I have nothing to say to the nothing that has been said." Spencer Perceval, British Prime Minister

"Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help." Ken Livingstone

"Being in the backbench, we are typecast as if we are all stupid. We are just supposed to be voting machines." Clifford Lincoln

"A majority is always the best repartee." Benjamin Disraelli

"In fact, the mass of the English people yield a deference rather than to something else than their rulers. They defer to what we may call the theatrical show of society…The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of the a splendid procession: it is by them that the mob are influenced; it is they who the inspectors cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second hand carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them." Walter Bagehot

"It is even more damaging for a minister to say foolish things than to do them." Cardinal De Retz

"I always voted for my party’s call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all." W.S. Gilbert

"The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern." Walter Bagehot

"We’re not a separate branch of government. It is probably smart for committees to get a sense of how their recommendations will be received by the Minister. You can’t operate in a total vacuum or a committee risks being ignored.’’ Barry Campbell

"A cabinet is a combining committee – a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin in belongs to one, in its functions it belongs to the other." Walter Bagehot

"Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm." Oscar Wilde

"There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet – you can crawl in or kick your way in." Aneurin Bevan

"There is a myth that the rules are fair…The rules are set up to guarantee that the minority will be heard but are weighted to allow the government to govern. That is the principle and that is the rub." Camille Montpetit

"It’s amazing the number of smart witnesses who feel like deer caught in the headlights when reporters microphones are thrust under noses outside the committee room. Be ready to drive your message again. This is part of the performance. It’s like being called back for an encore." Laura Peck

"Ottawa is a flurry of committee activity, departmental consultations, caucus work and private one-on-one meetings between Canadians and Parliamentarians….Parliamentary committees link Canadians to their parliamentarians. There is simply no other forum for Canadians to hook into the legislative and policy making process on a regular, formal and public basis." David McInnes

"Efficiency in an assembly requires a solid mass of steady votes; and these are collected by a deferential attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles that those men represent, and they are maintained by fear of those men – by the fear that if you vote against them, you may soon yourself have not vote at all." Walter Bagehot

"The strong-minded, thick-skinned, useful, ordinary member, either of the Government or the Opposition, had been very easy to describe and had required no imagination to conceive. The character reproduces itself from generation to generation; and as it does so, become shorn in a wonderful way of those little touches of humanity which would be destructive of its purpose. Now and again there comes burst of human nature, …but as a rule, the men submit themselves to be shaped and fashioned, and to be formed into tools, which are used either for building up or tearing down, and can generally bear to be changed from this box into the other, without the appearance of much personal suffering. Four and twenty gentlemen will amalgamate themselves into one whole, and work for one purpose, having each of them set aside his own idiosyncrasy, and to endure the close personal contact of men who must often be personally disagreeable, having been thoroughly taught that in no other way can they serve either their own country or their own ambition. These are the men who are publicly useful, and whom the necessities of the age supply. I have never ceased to wonder that stones of such strong caliber should be so quickly worn down to the shape and smoothness of rounded pebbles." Anthony Trollope

"When in the House MPs divide
If they have a brain and cerebellum too,
They have to leave their brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell ‘em to." W.S. Gilbert

"Every Cabinet Minister is in a sense the Prime Minister’ agent – his assistant. There’s no question about that. It is the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, and he is the one person directly responsible to the Queen for what the Cabinet does. If the Cabinet discusses anything it is the Prime Minister who decides what the collective view of Cabinet is. A Minister’s job is to save the Prime Minister all the work he can. But no Minister could make a really important move without consulting the Prime Minister, and if the Prime Minister wanted to take a certain step the Cabinet Minister concerned would either have to agree, argue it out in Cabinet, or resign." Lord Home

"I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say." Margaret Thatcher

"There is a lot to be said for a prime minister concentrating on just keeping his head above water, without actually doing things. Politics, remember, is the art of the possible, and in Canadian politics not very much is ever possible." George Bain

"Since the top of the inter-agency hierarchy of the Prime Minister, and since he is obviously beyond reach as the arbiter of departmental disagreements on powers and processes, the result is a perpetual squabbling without any accessible referee … as veteran of dozens of interdepartmental committee meetings, I can attest to how good ideas can be ground down to pedestrian programs, and to how everyone is given a little pieces of the action as a tribute for letting proposals go forward." H. L. Laframboise

"Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it….The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials." Anthony Wedgewood-Benn

"I say to myself that I must not let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand. I’m pushed in, shepherded, nurse and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me." Richard Crossman

"An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too – at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own…A man who enters Parliament must be content to utter common thoughts…And to some minds there is no necessity more vexing or more intolerable. Walter Bagehot

"We already have a sabbatical system. Its called opposition, and I’ve had enough of it." Nigel Lawson

"An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next." Valery

"The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it." Walter Bagehot

"One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament." Walter Bagehot

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

"One of the biggest challenges for people when they’re faced with a public policy issue is defining what the issue is from the perspective of people in government. I think the main thing a client should be looking for in a lobbyist or a government relations consultant is for help to think the way people in government have to think when they’re looking at an issue. It’s the only way you’re going to win the day on an issue." Sean Moore


"Okay, you've convinced me. Now go out there and bring pressure on me." President Franklin D. Roosevelt, (In response to a business delegation)

"Those who do not know the plans of competitors cannot prepare alliances. Those who do not know the lay of the land cannot maneuver their forces. Those who do not use local guides cannot take advantage of the ground." Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"The best government consultant is one that has a good track record, actual experience in the way the government works, a willingness to get into the trenches on a client's behalf, good contacts and credibility and a willingness to work toward not only resolving a current problem but devising a strategy to Avoid future ones." Senator William Kelley

"Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise itself as the relationship to government. The manager has responsibility for this relationship as part of his responsibility to the enterprise itself. To a large extent the relationship to government results from what businesses do or fail to do." Peter Drucker

"The main advantage of the on-the-scene consulting firm is that it can give you expert representation relatively quickly. The company or association is, in effect, buying the accumulated experience and key contacts of that firm, and thus avoiding the time-consuming and expensive process of building those contacts for themselves." Dr. S. Sarpkaya

"Professional lobbyists know their territory. They make very efficient use of their client's time. They can find out where your problem lies, who to talk to, and what questions to ask. They can tell you what information you need to have, and what questions you will have to answer. You will find out who you have to convince and why. Essentially, they guide you through the jungle of government and public opinion." Honourable John Reid, The Question of Lobbying

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

"As a supplicant to government, you cannot afford to bulls—t! Government reserves that right for itself." Anonymous

"Government relations is a test of how you manage frustration" . Anonymous

"Nine times out of ten Ministers side with their officials. Do you want a 10% or 90% chance of success." Anonymous

"There isn’t enough understanding by business of the constraints facing government. What government needs is a kind of real political advice that is based not just on what business wants, but what government can deliver, and what everyone can settle for. Business lobbies generally govern badly. Business still comes to scream if something gores its ox. But there still isn’t enough analysis of why government takes a particular stand on policy, and depending on the source of that stand, whether it can be adjusted or not." Stanley Hart

"This victory is in large part due to the Internet... For the first time, a coalition of NGOs has had an influence on the security of the entire world without being a superpower." Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

"Politicians used to put out leaflets with pictures of their family and pet dog and copies of their lousy speeches and it would be enough. Unfortunately many politicians now just create a web site with pictures of their family and pet dog and their lousy speeches but it is not good enough," Stephen Coleman, Oxford Internet Institute

"A lot of the Internet traffic may represent an echo chamber of virtual activism rather than meaningful protest. The web allows people who agree with each other to talk to each other and gives them the impression of being part of a much larger network than is necessarily the case." Barbara Epstein, University of California Professor

"The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it." Bill Gates

"There is a connection waiting to be made between the decline in democratic participation and the explosion in new ways of communicating. We need not accept the paradox that gives us more ways than ever to speak, and leaves the public with a wider feeling than ever before that their voices are not being heard. The new technologies can strengthen our democracy, by giving us greater opportunities than ever before for better transparency and a more responsive relationship between government and electors" The Honourable Robin Cook

"The Internet makes it far easier for us to restrict ourselves, much of the same, to groups of like-minded people -- to live in echo chambers of our own devising. In this way, the Internet is creating an increase, in many places, of social fragmentation, and hence an increase in both tolerance and incivility, as people end up seeing their fellow citizens as stupid, or malicious, or despicable. This problem is increased by the fact that much of the Internet is intolerant and far from civil. The culture of (some) television -- with liberals simply attacking conservatives, and vice-versa -- isn't healthy for democracy or tolerance, because it encourages people to choose teams, rather than to think issues through. For many people the Internet is aggravating this problem." Cass Sunstein, Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of Republic.com

"With email, a person can get his questions answered. You can bring people up to different levels of engagement with the campaign. You can't do that with any other medium." Joe Rothstein, Washington, DC consultant

"At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information. Just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. You can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Websites that reinforce your own stereotypes." Thomas Friedman, New York Times

"Overall, the work of rebuilding and transforming government for the digital age is only just beginning. Governments remain organized according to political and bureaucratic imperatives, not according to what makes the most sense to citizens." Andrew Leigh and Robert Atkinson in "Breaking down bureaucratic barriers: the next phase of digital government"

"Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who can not, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live." Peter Cochrane

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." author unknown

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." Nobel laureate economist Herbert A. Simon

"The positive claims for the value of the Internet offered by our contemporaries are mostly hype. Whatever the long-range value of the Net turns out to be, it won't be the quality of information it offers, the democratic distance learning it makes possible, the presence of the Net user to all of reality, and the possibility of a new life full of meaning." Hubert Dreyfus, Philosopher University of California

"Overall, the work of rebuilding and transforming government for the digital age is only just beginning....Governments remain organized according to political and bureaucratic imperatives, not according to what makes the most sense to citizens." Andrew Leigh and Robert Atkinson in "Breaking down bureaucratic barriers: the next phase of digital government"

"A candidate who can master the Internet will not only level the playing field; he will level the opposition." RightClick Strategies' Larry Purpuro

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke

"The Internet has become the main strategic communications tool behind the scenes in politics. It is not a medium to sway undecided voters. It is a medium to organize your supporters, feed them your message and get out your core vote. It may have an impact on new and less frequent voters some day, but that seems a long way off. No candidate that I am aware of has ever won because of the Internet." Steve Clift, Democracy Online

"The Web is trivially simple - massively successful and its like Karaoke - anybody can do it." Ted Nelson, Computer Visionary & Founder of Hyper Text

"Encouraging e-democracy is less desirable to elected officials. On the contrary, most of what they do while in office is try to increase their chances for re-election. Consider a politician who has the opportunity to create easily accessible public records of public meetings, including his own roll call votes. The person most motivated to use such records would likely be an opponent who wants to embarrass the incumbent." New America Foundation fellow James Snider

"The net is more than an organizing tool - it has become an organizing model, a blueprint for decentralized but cooperative decision-making. It facilitates the process of information sharing to such an extent that many groups can work in concert with one another without the need to achieve monolithic consensus." Naomi Klein, No Logo

"Many key decisions are complex, and there is considerable uncertainty about the consequences of alternative measures. The policy-making bureaux in most governments are limited in size, and are typically overloaded. The new technologies hold out the promise of drawing upon far wider expertise. The challenge is how to do this in the most effective way. I suspect that the more structured the questions that are posed in the Internet dialogue the more meaningful will be the responses. Participants in the dialogue could be required to provide evidence backing up their arguments. One advantage of this approach is that it would widen the circle of expertise which the government could draw upon, which all too often is limited by circles of personal acquaintance." Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank

"The net, by its very nature, is inclusive. It reduces the barriers to human interaction. That said, for the Internet to . . .transform and not to perpetuate our political circumstances, three further conditions must be met. The first, most obviously, is universal Internet access. The second is a citizen body . . . willing and able to use the net to become connected and re-engaged. And the third, perhaps most importantly, is a formal political class with some predisposition to take Internet politics seriously. Of these, there is evidence to suggest that the big problem lies with the formal political class." Ian Kearns and Nick Hardy, Institute for Public Policy Research, UK

"Each new generation of nerds thinks it has the answer, only to run into the same brick wall of human behaviour. We must understand people and organizations before we can determine how to meld them with technology." Frank Bannister, a senior lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and e-democracy expert

"While the major political parties have struggled to use the Internet to their advantage, grassroots groups with enthusiasm beyond their budgets are finding that electronic politics can be a powerful force. The old and inefficient telephone tree is giving way to e-mail lists and computers that can send a letter or news alert to thousands of people in seconds. It is a trend that might reshape politics, bringing more people into a newly decentralized - - and democratized - - process just when many experts have concluded that the nation suffers from a near-terminal case of apathy." Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee

"Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work." Laurie Anderson, Artist and technology pioneer

"One must be wary of the view that these loose and diverse coalitions represent a new form of globalized participatory democracy. The dissent industry is largely a product of the Internet revolution. Inexpensive, borderless, real-time networking provides advocacy non-governmental organizations [NGOs] with economies of scale and also of scope by linking widely disparate groups with one common theme." Sylvia Ostry

"I can't think of anything except kissing babies that you can't do online." Michael Cornfield, political scientist at George Washington University.

The modern campaign headquarters...has an annex open any hour of the day or night, at an address starting with www. New York Times, 10/19/99.

The Internet is rapidly taking its place as a full-fledged component of the political campaign media mix. As it does, it will open more opportunities of leveraging the most valuable currency in the modern world of political campaigns: information. Ron Faucheaux, editor-in-chief, Campaigns & Elections.

"The technology that's out there is going to change the country; therefore, it's going to change our politics." Doug Bailey, publisher, Hotline.

"Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.” Max Frisch

"I was not only the first woman to become secretary of state, I was the first [U.S.] secretary of state of the 21st century. I was the first secretary of state to own a Web site, to visit Internet cafes, and to make Internet access a part of policy." Madeleine Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State

"By and large, people are sort of technologically averse in the political space." Mike McCurry, Press secretary to President Clinton.

"Today there are 400 million people around the world who have access to the Internet. By 2005, there will be more than 1 billion. We can all imagine the expectations and demands this will impose on government, but also the possibilities it will bring for improving services and revitalizing democracy." Graham Stringer, UK Minister

"Creating the foundation for dramatic change, the Internet has had a profound impact-in part by enabling organizers to quickly and easily arrange demonstrations and protests, worldwide if necessary. Individuals and groups now are able to establish dates, share experiences, accept responsibilities, arrange logistics, and initiate a myriad of other taskings that would have been impossible to manage readily and rapidly in the past. International protests and demonstrations can be organized for the same date and time, so that a series of protests take place in concert. The Internet has breathed new life into the anarchist philosophy, permitting communication and coordination without the need for a central source of command, and facilitating coordinated actions with minimal resources and bureaucracy. It has allowed groups and individuals to cement bonds, file e-mail reports of perceived successes, and recruit members." Canadian Security Intelligence Report, Anti-globalization: Spreading Phenomenon

"The Internet is becoming the ‘pre-digestion’ chamber for public policy discussion. Public policy ideas are being introduced, accessed, advocated, promoted, and debated on-line and then flow into the formal channels of official policymaking. As issues move through these channels, a parallel debate occurs on-line. When decisions are taken, the issues are re-fought on-line. Cyber debate and discussion is becoming the background soundtrack of government policy-making, both reflecting and influencing the process." Scott Proudfoot, Hillwatch

"Men have become the tools of their tools." Henry David Thoreau

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." Mahatma Gandhi

"Technology is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand and stabs you in the back with the other.” C.P. Snow

"I'm addicted to the Internet. I admit it. It has transformed the way I work as a senator, communicate with my children, and keep tabs on news and cultural developments.... The Internet is a more direct communications link between legislators and their constituents....I constantly work at fusing my Senate work into my office home page to make it as useful, timely, and user-friendly as possible for Vermonters and others who may visit.....I look at my Web site, as my 24-hour virtual office, where visitors can send me an e-mail or search for the information they need anytime, day or night.” Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont

"New information technologies—including email, the web, and computerized blast-faxes and phone calls—have fundamentally changed the landscape of political competition in modern democracies. They’ve done so in three ways: by dramatically boosting the access of individuals and special interests to politically potent information, by making it easier for such people to coordinate their activities and exert political power, and by greatly increasing the pace of events within our political systems.” Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila." Mitch Radcliffe

"The electronic town hall allows for speedy communications and bad decision-making." David Shenk

"Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people....The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster." Al Gore

"From far left to far right - and almost every point in between - advocacy groups are leading the charge into cyberpolitics. It’s essentially impossible to find an activist group of any significance that does not have an internet presence today. Advocacy groups, having gained experience from constant campaigning, tend to engage in more sophisticated online activism than candidates and corporations do. And they're constantly getting better at it..... It is not a medium for mass persuasion; if you want to run for president, you'd better buy lots of television advertising. But, if you want to move individuals to meet, march, and mail public officials, you'd best be online..... It levels the playing field and lowers barriers to participation by placing powerful information and communications tools in the hands of even small nd cash-strapped organizations. With an ever-increasing number of government documents available online, key information is no longer restricted to organizations with sophisticated Washington-based lobbyists who know on which Capital Hill doors to knock. One e-mail alert can do the world of countless phone trees and in infinitely faster than mailings. Organizations can afford to communicate with non-members and to build rosters of activists who are not dues-paying members.” Tom Price, ZDNet

"Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre." Goethe

"Information and images bump against each other every day in massive quantities, and the resonance of this interfacing is like the babble of a village or tavern gossip session." Marshall McLuhan

"It has provided more access to more information and political activity than anyone has in the history of the world to a sliver of the population – for instance junkies like me. But most others have been largely oblivious to the information cyber-revolution." Norman Ornstein

"The Internet is many things simultaneously …a new broadcast medium…interactive bulletin board …enormous collaboration tool…a huge post office.. The Internet is a venue for one-to-many communications, one-to-one communications, and many-to-many communications." Kevin Hill & John Hughes

"A survey by Holm Group in 1998 found that 88% of staff members in congressional offices check the Internet for information every day." Rebecca Fairley Raney

"Our marvelous new information technologies boost our power and opportunities for political engagement, but they can also disempower us by contributing to extreme political mobilization that sometimes overwhelms our institutions. These institutions were designed for rural societies operation at a tiny fraction of today’s speed and with a citizenry vastly less capable that today’s. It’s unclear how they will change to adapt to the new reality, but change they must." Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto

"The political technology of the Industrial age is no longer appropriate technology for the new civilization taking form around us. Our politics are obsolete." Alvin Toffler

"Keep your web pages up to date. 'The first thing I do with a witness is go to their web site.'" notes a parliamentary researcher. David McInnes

"High-powered politicians had reams of statistics and analysis why a set of international investing rules would make the world a better place. They were no match, however, for a global ban of grass roots organizations, which, with little more than computers and access to the Internet, helped derail a deal.”
Madelaine Drohan

"Who killed the MAI – the Multilateral agreement on Investment? According to many accounts, civil society deserves the credit – or blame – and its weapon of choice was the Internet. The Internet with its revolutionary ability to connect millions and share information and strategies across time and space, allowed for an unprecedented global mobilization of opposition to the Agreement." Horizons

"From gas prices to cultural jamming and on-line concerts, the Internet is a hotbed of activity. On-line activism is everywhere and while this kind of Internet usage might not get the attention that dot.com startups and broadband battles do, the innovative uses of the Internet are reminders that real people are using technology to incite actions and maker their voices heard." Emma Smith

"The Internet, unlike television, is not universally available, and online information reaches only highly interested voters." Rebecca Fairley Raney

"In the ever accelerating world of the Internet, e-campaigning has gone from a novelty to a necessity in less than a year. With increasing sophistication and urgency, campaigns are using the Web as a bulletin board, advertising medium and organizing tool." Howard Fineman

"The potential of any technology is always dissipated by its users involvement in its predecessors…Computer are still serving mainly to sustain precomputer effects." Marshall McLuahn

"Unless the digital divide is narrowed soon, the United States may be headed to the class warfare of a century ago, the last time the economy changed so fundamentally. It won’t be pleasant." Jonathan Alter

"The net is emerging as mainstream, multipurpose political tool." Amy Borrus

"The Information Revolution is likely to democratize politics by weakening the elites’ grip on information." Richard Dunham

"Without question, the mass gathering of peaceful protestors and a small number of violent critics of the WTO would not have been possible without a wired world. With thousands of web sites featuring sophisticated analysis of the complex 134 country organization and urging the world to come to Seattle, it was the Internet that made this protest the loudest and largest in decades." Bill Tieleman

"As a two way mass communications medium that allows users to receive news and information, as well as participate in information transmission and public discussion, the Internet potentially diffuses power over information and public debate. That ability even extends to overt lobbying by individuals in behalf of their own political interests." Richard Davis

"The new electronic independence recreates the world in the image of a global village." Marshall McLuhan

"Advancements in electoral politics have almost always come from marketing, advertising, and communications techniques which were developed and refined for the consumer marketplace….As new marketing and communications techniques are developed to respond to the e-commerce boom, it will likely be from these areas that crossover applications to the electoral arena will originate." Grant Kippen

"The communications revolution is changing how people interact with one another, how organizations engage their constituencies, how we access information. It also makes possible a collective I.Q. where thousands of people can be connected to focus on an issue." Morino Institute

"In 1994, if a political party or interest group had even a rudimentary web site, it was a pioneer in the Information Age. In 1995, if a party or organization had a flashy series of web pages that included graphics, audio, video or text, it was hip. In 1996, if a Candidate for president has a web site, he would likely give out the address for during televised appearances…By 1997, if a party or interest group still did not have a web site, it was run by a bunch of idiots….Any political party or interest group …that does not take advantage of the Internet for lobbying, member recruitment and retention, and information dissemination, is cheating itself of one of the biggest boons to organized political activity in the twentieth century…The web is potentially the greatest thing since the postal system and the telephone for political interest groups." Kevin Hill & John Hughes

"We have not eternal allies and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and peretual and those interests it is out duty to follow." Lord Palmerston, British Prime Minister

"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." John Adams

''It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.'' Eleanor Roosevelt

"Whoever has an army has power, and war decides everything." Mao Tse Tung

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao Tse Tung

"War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished." Julius Caesar

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." George S. Patton, General

"To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." George Washington

"I say one evil empire down…one to go." Michael Moore, The Big One

"There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit." Napoleon Bonaparte

''Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.'' Charles de Gaulle

"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love." George Santayana

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." G.B. Shaw

"Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it." Anne O'Hare McCormick

"Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake." Viktor Frankl

"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." Gen. Omar Bradley

"He who does not attempt to make peace / When small discords arise, / Is like the bee's hive which leaks drops of honey / Soon, the whole hive collapses." Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)

"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day." Sir Winston Churchill

"The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood." Arthur Powell Davies

"The triumph of economic globalization has inspired a wave of techno-savvy investigative activists who are as globally minded as the corporations they track." Naomi Klein, No Logo

"I consider war to be the greatest folly, if not the greatest crime, of which a country could be guilty, if lightly entered into. If a proof were wanted of the deep and thorough corruption of human nature, we should find it in the fact that war itself was sometimes justifiable." Earl of Aberdeen, British Prime Minister

"We hear war called murder. It is not; it is suicide." James Ramsay MacDonald, British Prime Minister

"The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all." Dwight Eisenhower

"There is a very real danger that we will kill everything on this planet now that we have the technological power to do so." Stephen Hawking, Physicist

"If you look at democratic societies, what you find is that they are constructed on the basis of the nation state, and the foundation of that is 'responsible individualism,' which takes the formal form of 'citizenship,' which turns into a 'social contract,' which in practical terms is 'democracy.' That is the real definition of a real nation, a real country. Therefore every economic power that is removed from a nation state and put into the international sector without the creation of compensating international powers for the citizens to assert the public good, is an anti-democratic move; it is a regress, not a progress. International agreements based on theories that exclude the idea of aggressive citizenship are anti-democratic." John Ralston Saul

"There is no longer a clear, bright line dividing America's domestic concerns and America's foreign policy concerns...If we want America to stay on the right track, if we want other people to be on that track and have the chance to enjoy peace and prosperity, we have no choice but to try to lead the train." President Bill Clinton

"When dealing with Canadians, it is advantageous to seem to be negotiating from a position of weakness, for when faced with an abject opponent, they become concession-happy and will accede to almost anything." British Diplomat, Alleyne Fitzherbert

"What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?" Lin Yutang

"A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience, and many have been precipitated by reckless haste." Adlai Stevenson

"Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions because it loves moderation, delights in compromise an is most careful to avoid anger." de Tocqueville

"The meat of the buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border." Sitting Bull

"People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity." John Adams

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." H.G. Wells

"I love my country far too much to be a nationalist." Unknown

"Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values." Jose Ortega y Gasset

"The problem with the global village is all the global village idiots." P. Ginsparg "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

"The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies." Lester Pearson

"Patriotism corrupts history." Goethe

"The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull." Dean Acheson

"Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last." Charles de Gaulle

"Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over." Goethe

"At bottom, every state regards another as a gang of robbers who will fall upon it as soon as there is an opportunity." Schopenhauer

"The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order." Bernard Crick

"There’ll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics." Walter Wriston

"Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people." John Adams

"Ambition is one of the ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable." John Adams

"Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not." John Adams

"If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is, I believe, because worthless mean are at the tail and middle." John Adams

"Governments should fear weariness above all. Once it sets in, it is hard to dispel and almost invariably presages decline and eventual defeat." The Economist

''There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.'' Roy Jenkins

"A leader is a dealer in hope." Napoleon Bonaparte

"Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects." Tolstoy

"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." Thomas Jefferson

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." Winston Churchill

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." President William Jefferson Clinton 5/29/93

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Thomas Jefferson

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Thomas Jefferson

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State wants to live at the expense of everyone." Fredrick Bastiat

"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." Thomas Jefferson

"There is but one element of government, and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element spring all governments. For a nation to be free, it is only necessary that she wills it. For a nation to be slave, it is only necessary that she wills it." John Adams

"Power is not alluring to pure minds." Thomas Jefferson

"When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsiblitiy for themselves. George Pataki

"Most bad government has grown out of too much government." Thomas Jefferson

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." Charles Austin Beard

"If a government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, within five years, they'd have a shortage of sand." Milton Friedman

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" Thomas Jefferson

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." Barry Goldwater

"A silent majority and government by the people is incompatible." Tom Hayden

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

"Fiftyone percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic." Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn

"The government's view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson.

"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem." Milton Friedman

"If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate." Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." Bertrand de Jouvenal

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Thomas Jefferson

"Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship." Harry S. Truman

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." Kierkegaard

"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary." Kathleen Norris

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Thomas Jefferson

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

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." Ronald Reagan

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent." Adam Smith

"A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader." Harry S. Truman

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine

"Today the nations of the world may be divided into two classes - the nations in which the government fears the people, and the nations in which the people fear the government." Amos R. E. Pinochet

"Fire, water and government know nothing of mercy." Albanian Proverb

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." Voltaire

"Pro is to con as progress is to Congress." Anonymous

"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too." Richard M. Nixon

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments." William H. Borah

"As a rule, the Government appoints its friends." Sir Hector Langevin, Canadian Cabinet Minister

"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken." Bertrand Russell

"Would it not be simpler
If the Government
Dissolved the people
And elected another?" Bertolt Brecht

“The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.” John Stuart Mill

"Any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful." John Stuart Mill

"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there." Clare Booth Luce

"It can produce cynicism if people believe that the process is merely something that has to happen; they almost become bit players in the process, arriving at decisions that are already made. I emphasise the importance of people knowing that their participation is for real, and that it can affect the outcome. We should not allow public sector managers simply to tick a box to say that they have done the participation bit; participation should contribute to the decision-making process. If it does not, we will genuinely undercut all the good things that are happening." Tony Wright, British MP

"I wouldn't say voters are stupid. But the same voter who wants unlimited services also does not want to pay for it. There's a disconnect." Phil Talmadge, former Washington Supreme Court judge and legislator.

"Public opinion in this country is everything." Abraham Lincoln

"Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing." Benjamin Disraeli

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." John F. Kennedy

"Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing." Benjamin Disraeli

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." John F. Kennedy


"I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management." E.B. White

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." James Madison

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." Antoine de Saint-Exupery


"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!" Abraham Lincoln

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences." Robert Green Ingersoll

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Louis Dembitz Brandeis

"History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided." Konrad Adenauer

"Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won't cooperate with each other - unless they are forced to do so by political level authority." Richard Holbrooke, US Diplomat

"Regulations are government embedding and marbling its way into and out of successive layers of societal activity. It is government deconstructing, rebuilding, renovating and expanding a little each day. The regulatory machinery may move a little faster or a little slower, but like rust, it never sleeps." Scott Proudfoot, Hillwatch

"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us." Thich Nhat Hanh

"It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack." Voltaire

"It is always with the best intentions tha