Law and Politics

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

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

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

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

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

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Honoré de Balzac, in Law and Politics

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

John Perry Barlow, in Law and Politics

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

Lyman Beecher, in Law and Politics and Science and Religion

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

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

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

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

Unknown, in Law and Politics

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

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

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

Unknown, in Law and Politics

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

Unknown, (Russian proverb), in Law and Politics

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.

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

Politics makes strange bedfellows stranger.

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

Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will attempt to use it.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.

Unknown, in Law and Politics

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