Your Favorite Political Quotes

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson

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

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." --James Madison

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible: avoiding occasions of expence by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expence, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear." --George Washington

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." --James Madison

 

[PoliticalChic]

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..."
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey in 1998

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them...the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers." --James Madison,

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." --James Madison

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing." --Benjamin Franklin

"No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income." --Ronald Reagan

"East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other." --Ronald Reagan

"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, 'never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.'" --Thomas Jefferson



"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson

 

[Ernie S.]

"If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand

The Samuel Adams quote is likely the all time best ever.

 

[PoliticalChic]

If you've seen the Obama budget, you might think of this one:

After me the Deluge [“Après moi le Déluge”].

Meaning, 'When I am dead the deluge may come for aught I care'.
Generally ascribed to Prince Metternich, but the Prince borrowed it from Mme. Pompadour, who laughed off all the remonstrance’s of ministers at her extravagance by saying, “Après nous le déluge” (Ruin, if you like, when we are dead and gone).

 

[GHook93]

"In troubling times like these the government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem."
- Reagan

"Don't ask what you country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
- JFK

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character... I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.


"But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."
-Justice Harlan in the Dissent of Plessy v. Ferguson

"Rosalynn I need my underwear changed, I just pooped myself again."
- Jimmy Carter to his wife every night from 1976-1980


"..... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent mournful expanse.... a desolation.... we never saw a human being on the whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."
- Mark Twain in 1867 while visiting Palestine/Israel

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
- Winston Churchill

 

[GHook93]

"We need to pass it to see what's in it."
- The Brain Dead Nancy Pelosi on passing Obamacare

 

[Big Black Dog]

"Fuck 'em and feed 'em hot dogs." These words uttered by someone running for country board in Ogle County, Illinois at the 4th of July picnic 2010.

 

[PoliticalChic]

O'Sullivan's First Law (a.k.a. O'Sullivan's Law), paraphrased by George Will as stating that any institution that is not libertarian and classically liberal will, over time, become collectivist and statist.

 

[Two Thumbs]

I can never remember who said what, but here's a few

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Tear down this wall!... Reagan

Lifes not fair and it's often cruel. / No one cares what you say, it's what you do that counts, so if you want to be remember you better get out there and do something for somebody... My Dad

Never has so much been owed to so few.

I did not have sex with that woman...

 

[Two Thumbs]

The opposite of progress is Congress... Twain