Aphorisms Galore!

Law and Politics

163 aphorisms  ·  7 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/lvxaopme  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/fiog0z7u  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/zcjracxo  ·  submitted 1997

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/vkpbru1q  ·  submitted 1997

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, "patriotism" is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

Ambrose Bierce, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/sp9ytcxh  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/16qnix2l  ·  submitted 1997

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.

Otto von Bismarck, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/zxzulgcs  ·  submitted 1997

We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

John Perry Barlow, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/ebp3wveo  ·  submitted 1997

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.

Lyman Beecher, in Law and Politics and Science and Religion

tiny.ag/yvxqb7s2  ·  submitted 1999

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not the opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed the same kind.

George Bernard, in Law and Politics and Life and Death

tiny.ag/5agdml7e  ·  submitted 1997

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

Yogi Berra, (on Frenchmen in American politics), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/svgptnqb  ·  submitted 1997

The people must fight for their laws as for their walls.

Heraclitus, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/lctsfa7d  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Edouard Herriot, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/ocm1aexh  ·  submitted 1997

Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident.

Walter Goodman, All Honorable Men, 1963, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/mcsdq3k5  ·  submitted 1997

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up "with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got."

Lord Greene, in Altruism and Cynicism and Law and Politics

tiny.ag/gam5ctee  ·  submitted 1997

If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.

A. K. Griffin, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/xenm7mq9  ·  submitted 1997

It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.

M. Grundler, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/mb7skahf  ·  submitted 1997

It is people who live by the rules that are always hoping to get them changed.

Robert Harbison, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/bncpxtdu  ·  submitted 1997

I'm very critical of the U.S., but get me outside the country and all of a sudden I can't bring myself to say one nasty thing about the U.S.

Saul Alinsky, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/0c4jaqsc  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Oscar Ameringer, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/yqgp7fad  ·  submitted 1997

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Mahatma Gandhi, in Law and Politics