Aphorisms Galore!

Law and Politics

163 aphorisms  ·  7 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/qmh4jgbw  ·  submitted 1997

Vote early and vote often.

Al Capone, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/ywjorl1b  ·  submitted 1997

When the government fears the people, we have liberty. When the people fear the government, we have tyranny.

Unknown, in Altruism and Cynicism and 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/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/7pr2vmql  ·  submitted 1998 by Edward Wayne Blakeman

Nowadays it's not as important for voters to know what a politician has done as what he or she hasn't done.

Edward Blakeman, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/hjlqxeds  ·  submitted 1997

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

Christian Nevell Bovee, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/vdyroj5m  ·  submitted 1997

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Bertolt Brecht, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/6e8jdhxa  ·  submitted 1997

To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/h54z3wxd  ·  submitted 1997

Voters are people who have the God-given right to decide who will waste their money for them.

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

tiny.ag/k5imoxc2  ·  submitted 1997

Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/bmuf1k6g  ·  submitted 1997

People do not resist change -- they resist being changed.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/rp6yelnf  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is a rotten egg; if broken, it stinks.

Unknown, (Russian proverb), in Law and Politics