We observe that nothing creates fascists like the threat of freedom.
Politics Quotes
The list of top contributors is odd: Benito Mussolini has the most entries, then Disraeli, with a Nigerian governor, Bernard Crick and Jean Chrétien behind them. It reflects what Wikiquote editors chose to collect, not a ranking of who said it best.
The better-sourced lines are drier. Edmund Burke, in 1770, dismissed the cant of “Not men, but measures.” Stanisław Jerzy Lec’s Unkempt Thoughts (1957) has the shortest joke on the page, “a Trojan horse race.” Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (1911) calls politics a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Three well-known lines are flagged misattributed: “Politics is the art of the possible” (Franklin), a remark about playing your cards face upwards (H. G. Wells), and “politics have no relation to morals” (Machiavelli).
A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.
But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen.
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
In my whole legal career I have not met worse types of criminals than in politics.
Capitalist and imperialist countries created the conditions for the rise of fascism in the world.
All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
That is simple, my friend. It is because Politics is more difficult than physics.
Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?