Aphorisms Galore!

Law and Politics

163 aphorisms  ·  7 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

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/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/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/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/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/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/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/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/k0emebpg  ·  submitted 2011 by peter

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Neil Postman, in Wisdom and Ignorance and Law and Politics

tiny.ag/f4xotdy1  ·  submitted 1997

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.

Voltaire, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/is5ffzu6  ·  submitted 1997

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

Bill Vaughan, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/jjhww8cq  ·  submitted 1997

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.

Voltaire, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/yh5kxuzq  ·  submitted 1997

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Mark Twain, (inscription beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/mwoxawkr  ·  submitted 1997

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Mark Twain, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/weoyuknk  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

Paul Valéry, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), 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/zzcxms0q  ·  submitted 1997

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

Mark Twain, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/4awpxubp  ·  submitted 1997

Every nation ridicules other nations -- and all are right.

Arthur Schopenhauer, in Law and Politics