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"I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign...and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The General has dedicated himself so many times, he must feel like the cornerstone of a public building." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL), on Dwight Eisenhower
"We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship, the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL), on John Dulles
"A diplomat's life consists of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and, as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of his predecessor." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL), describing Richard Nixon
"Nixon seems to equate criticism with subversion and being hard on Republicans to being soft on communism." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay to hear the music of our own opinions." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn't inhale." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
The definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." -- Adlai Stevenson (D-IL)
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip." -- Caskie Stinnett, Out of the Red (1960)
"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting." -- Tom Stoppard
"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned." -- Charles Sumner
"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions." -- Jonathan Swift
"While three men hold together,/The kingdoms are less by three." -- Algernon Charles Swinburne; A Song In Time Of Order (1852)
"By general consent, he would have been capable of ruling, had he not ruled." -- Tacitus, Annales, said of Galba
"Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents -- but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea." -- William Howard Taft
"I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me." -- William Howard Taft
"I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town." -- William Howard Taft
"Politics makes me sick." -- William Howard Taft
"I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts." -- Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
"…and for that they were rich,/And robbed the poor; and for that they were strong,/And scourged the weak; and for that they made laws/Which turned the sweat of labor's brow to blood! -- /For these their sins the nations cast them out." -- Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde
"Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights." -- Susan L. Taylor
"We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally." -- Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese foreign minister
"If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister
"One thing that politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister
"There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors … I mean it." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister
"It's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands, when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister, on the Falklands War
"I don't mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister
"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by traffic from both sides." -- Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister
"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us." -- Thich Nhat Hanh
"In politics it is necessary to take nothing tragically and everything seriously." -- Louis Adolphe Thiers
"Men have become the tools of their trade." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves -- sometimes split into quarters -- which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia." -- Henry David Thoreau
"How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." -- Henry David Thoreau
"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." -- Henry David Thoreau
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." -- Alexis de Tocqueville "The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own." -- Alexis de Tocqueville
"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it." -- Alexis de Tocqueville
"I can't believe that we are going to let a majority of the people decide what's best for this state." -- Rep. John Travis of Jackson, LA
"If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first." -- Pierre Eliot Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister
Q: "What shall we do about the Abortion Bill?" A: "Pay it!" -- Pierre EliotTrudeau, Canadian Prime Minister
"A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it." -- Harry Truman
"I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here." -- Harry Truman
"Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar....He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides. -- Harry Truman
"It's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. It's an old political trick. But this time it won't work." -- Harry Truman, 1948
"The President is always abused. If he isn't, he isn't doing anything." -- Harry Truman
"Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me." -- Harry Truman
"Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend." -- Harry Truman
"A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants." -- Harry Truman
"A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a leader." -- Harry Truman
"You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now." -- Harry Truman
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." -- Harry Truman
"I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases." -- Harry Truman
"All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are
(Continued on page 21)
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