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-- Georges Bidault
"Let the pen and ink be wholly forbidden as if he were a mad poet of Bedlam." -- Nicolas Biddle; advice to Whig handlers of Wm. Henry Harrison
"Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment." -- Ambrose Bierce
"Politics is not an exact science." -- Otto von Bismarck
"Politics is the art of the next best." -- Otto von Bismarck
"There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America." -- Otto von Bismarck
"When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice." -- Otto von Bismarck
"Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness." -- Otto von Bismarck
"A statesman...must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment." -- Otto von Bismarck
"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making". -- Otto von Bismarck
"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election." -- Otto von Bismarck
"The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia." -- Otto von Bismarck
"In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently." -- Justice Harry A. Blackmun
"That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution." -- William Blackstone
"Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other." -- William Blackstone
"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
"It was the white liberals who marched with me so I could play golf, go bowling, and try on clothes in downtown Odessa. Now I'm hearing there's something wrong with them, and instead, those people who tried to keep me out--the city officials, the sheriffs, the power brokers-they're my friends. I prefer to adhere to what Darrell Royal says, 'You dance with who brung ya.'" -- Gary Bledsoe
"I think what it was about was the people's right to vote and have those votes counted. And if you think back through our history, an awful lot of what we've fought over, struggled for, is the right of people to vote. That's what the civil-rights movement was, at its bottom, about. At the fundamental level, democracy means a government in which the people vote." -- David Boies, on the Gore campaign's efforts to get the votes counted in Florida
"The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue. " -- Henry St. John Bolingbroke
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
"In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Politics are not the task of a Christian." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble." -- James H. Boren
"Not everyone is attracted to politics…. [S]cholars found that more than half the adults in Wayne County (Detroit) Michigan thought that politics was dirty and dishonest. Nearly half the political volunteers and political workers in the county thought so, too." -- David Botter (Politicians and What They Do, 1960.)
"Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous." -- Pierre Boulez
"In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at." -- Christian Nevell Bovee
"Nothing in politics is ever so good or as bad as it first appears." -- Edward Boyle
"That reminds me of the kind of politician who would chop down a tree, then stand on the stump and give a speech about conservation." -- Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ)
"I never met a politician who didn't want to be a guitar player in a rock band. I've got the opportunity to say what I believe in." -- Billy Bragg
"Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage." -- Jimmy Breslin
"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Try to relax and enjoy the crisis. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians. -- David Brinkley
"Washington, D.C. is a city filled with people who believe they are important." -- David Brinkley
"Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity." -- Vera Brittain
"Anyone that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office." -- David Broder
"A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both." -- Fawn M. Brodie
"Politics are about power; we cannot evade that truth or its consequences. We dream of a better world but it is in Utopia -- that is, nowhere." -- Denis William Brogan
"No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power." -- Jacob Bronowski
"It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of parliament to look at the men as well as at the measures." -- Lord Henry Peter Brougham
"Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." -- Lord Henry Peter Brougham
"Dressing is a matter of taste, and I've met very few Republicans with good taste." -- Willie Brown, Jr. (D-CA), political leader
"In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours." -- Willie Brown, Jr. (D-CA), political leader
"Circumstances in the world of politics contribute substantially to whether or not you can be successful." -- Willie Brown, Jr. (D-CA), political leader
"The public still ultimately determines what happens to you politically, by virtue of the casting of their vote ... and you cannot ever predict what will move the public in one direction or another." -- Willie Brown, Jr. (D-CA), political leader
"You're going to be accused of every high crime and low misdemeanor there is." -- Willie Brown, Jr. (D-CA), political leader
"A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position." -- Jean de la Bruyère, 1688
"Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do." -- Jean de la Bruyere
"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The DEMOCRATIC idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them" -- William Jennings Bryan, 1896
"The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later." -- William Jennings Bryan, 1892
"What is right and what is practicable are two different things." -- James Buchanan
"The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men." -- James Buchanan
"Defeat has its lessons as well as victory." -- Pat Buchanan
"Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?" -- Art Buchwald
"I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team." -- Art Buchwald
"A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents are rum, Romanism and rebellion." - Samuel D. Burchard, 1884
"You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe." - Edmund Burke, Reflexions on the Revolution in France "I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people." -- Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent
"To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to men." -- Edmund Burke, On American Taxation
"Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred." -- Edmund Burke
"This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature." -- Edmund Burke
"By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little." -- Edmund Burke
"History consists for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal and all the train of disorderly appetites." -- Edmund Burke, On Reflections on the Revolution in France
"It is a popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare." -- Edmund Burke, Present State of the Nation
"All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter." -- Edmund Burke
"Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement." -- Edmund Burke
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." -- Edmund Burke
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"I have no politics and no Party and no particular hope; only this is true: that beauty is very beautiful, and softens, and comforts, and inspires, and rouses and lifts up, and never fails." -- Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (letter to William Morris)
"In political combat, as in speed contests among horses, the outcome becomes doubtful only after the entry of the second contestant." -- Warren Burnett
(Continued on page 4)
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