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is my principle to uphold religion."
-- Etienne François, Duc de Choiseul
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people."
-- Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice
"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"The first mistake in public business is the going into it."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"My people and I have come to an agreement which satisfied us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."
-- Frederick the Great
"History is past politics, and politics is present history."
-- E. A. Freeman
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- Paulo Freire
"Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics."
-- French Proverb
"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
-- Robert Frost
"Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance."
-- Robert Frost
"In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith."
-- Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR)
"There has been a strong tradition in this country that it is not the function of the military to educate the public on political issues."
-- Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR)
"We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes."
-- Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR)
"To be a statesman, you must first get elected."
-- Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR)
"By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1966
"They that buy an office must sell something."
-- Thomas Fuller
"From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead -- an uncertain substitute."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Trickle-down theory. The less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"In public administration good sense would seem to require the public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize the eventual disappointment."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is."
-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all."
-- John W. Gardner
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities -- brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
-- John W. Gardner
"All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people."
-- James A. Garfield
"I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty."
-- James A. Garfield
"[The President is] the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think."
-- James A. Garfield
"Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue."
-- Giuseppe Garibaldi
"Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation."
-- William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist, 1831
"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."
-- William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist
"In France it was Joan of Arc; in the Crimea it was Florence Nightingale; in the deep south there was Rosa Parks; in India there was Mother Teresa and in Florida there was Katherine Harris,"
-- Larry Gatlin, introducing the Florida Secretary of State to an adoring crowd at the Florida Inaugural Ball. (CNN 01/22/01)
"Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance."
-- Charles de Gaulle
How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?"
-- Charles de Gaulle
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses; they last while they last."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country of the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate."
-- Charles De Gaulle
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
-- Charles de Gaulle
"Because we can't comprehend it, and that's what allows us to do it again. And it is the normal, it's the average person that can do this. Again, in an imaginary other universe, maybe we'd have done it. That's the terrible truth that lies at the heart of each of us; that imponderable, 'were I not Jewish, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, would I have gone down on the other side?'"
-- Bob Geldof, 09/09/2002
"A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and Dukes are just as great a terror, and they last longer."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"A body of 500 men chosen at random from amongst the unemployed."
--David Lloyd George, British prime minister; describing the House of Lords
"Diplomats were invented simply to waste time."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"Wild men, screaming through the keyholes."
--David Lloyd George, British prime minister, on the Versailles Peace Conference
"The government are behaving like a bevy of maiden aunts who have fallen among buccaneers."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister; on Britain's response to the Spanish Civil War
"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"You cannot feed the hungry on statistics."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"If you want to succeed in politics you must keep your conscience firmly under control."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"Neville [Chamberlain] has a retail mind in a wholesale business."
--David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in."
-- David Lloyd George, British prime minister
"You voracious man-eating son of a bitch, there was seven Democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five of them!"
-- Judge Melville B. Gerry, pronouncing sentence upon Alferd Packer (probably apocryphal)
"When in that House MPs divide/If they've a brain and cerebellum, too/They've got to leave that brain outside/And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to."
-- William S. Gilbert, Iolanthe (1882)
"I always voted at my party's call/And I never thought of thinking of myself at all."
- William S. Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore
"In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"I love the environment, but I'm cheap on the environment."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"The idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If [voters] care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"Politics and war are remarkably similar situations."
-- Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
"If the Soviet empire still existed, I'd be terrified. The fact is, we can (Continued on page 9)
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