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(Continued from page 13)
keep his lips closed."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Important principles may and must be flexible."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"He who molds the public sentiment . . . makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Public opinion in this country is everything."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged."
-- Abraham Lincoln ~
"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. That everyone may receive at least a moderate education appears to be an objective of vital importance."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Whatever you are, be a good one."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"I will prepare and some day my chance will come.
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters."
-- Walter Lippmann
"Young man, when you are 86 years old, you don't care who your state senator is!"
-- a Little Old Lady, to candidate Bill Sarpalius (D-TX)
"If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it."
- Ken Livingstone
"She has slimmed down since the height of impeachment, her thick blow-dried hair as shiny as Russian sable and her creamy cleavage, as historic in its own way as Mount Rushmore, was quite wonderful to behold."
--The London Times, description of Monica Lewinsky
"Every time I fill a vacant office, I make ten malcontents and one ingrate."
-- Louis XIV
"Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship."
-- James Russell Lowell
"Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face."
-- Clare Booth Luce
"So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds."
-- Lucretius
"Politics have no relation to morals."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a Prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case"
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things"
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
"A successful current affairs television show seems to be more and more a cross between a music hall turn and a scene in a torture chamber."
-- Harold Macmillan, British prime minister
"The only quality needed for an MP is the ability to write a good letter."
-- Harold Macmillan, British prime minister
"Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips."
-- Harold Macmillan, British prime minister, advice to new MP's
"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
-- James Madison
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
-- James Madison
"What Democratic congressmen do to their women staffers, Republican congressmen do to the country."
-- Bill Maher
"George Bush says, 'Gore's book needs a lot of explaining.' Of course, Bush says that about every book."
-- Bill Maher
"Politics are always a struggle for power, disguised and modified by prudence, reason and moral pretext."
-- William Hurrell Mallock
"When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat."
-- Nelson Mandela
"Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."
-- Mao Tse-Tung
"A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."
-- Justice Thurgood Marshall
"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens -- and then everybody disagrees."
-- Boris Marshalov
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
-- Groucho Marx
"The thing they struggle with is that their electoral base and their governing base are not the same. The best way to win the Republican Party is to be to the far right in the primary. But it's also the fastest way to lose the general election."
-- Thad Mathis, Temple University
"Hell, there's no back door at the Alamo. That's why we had so many dead heroes."
-- Maury Maverick, Jr., Texas legislator, 1960 (when told Senator John Kennedy wanted to exit via the back door.)
"The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"Being in politics is like being in a football game. You have to be smart enough to know the game and stupid enough to think it important."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"No man could be equipped for the presidency if he has never been tempted by one of the seven cardinal sins."
-- Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
"Politics, in a sense, has always been a con game."
-- Joe McGinniss
"It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U. S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate."
-- Senator George McGovern (D-SD)
"Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public."
-- Senator George McGovern (D-SD)
"The longer the title, the less important the job."
-- Senator George McGovern (D-SD)
"Our differences are politics. Our agreements are principles."
-- William McKinley
"There is always some basic principle that will ultimately get the Republican party together. If my observations are worth anything, that basic principle is the cohesive power of public plunder."
-- Senator A. J. McLaurin (D-MS), 1906
"What this White House really needs is a chief of staff who can read Machiavelli in the original Italian."
-- Mack McLarty, 1994
"Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be."
-- Herbert "Marshall" McLuhan
"…there's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse."
-- Golda Meir
"As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing."
-- Golda Meir
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."
-- H. L. Mencken
"All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling."
-- H. L. Mencken
"A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard (Continued on page 15)
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