Politics and Power

Warfare is the art of deceit.

La politique au milieu des intérêts d’imagination, c’est un coup de pistolet au milieu d’un concert . Politics in the middle of things concerning the imagination are like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

[ When asked by French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval to encourage Catholicism in the Soviet Union in order to appease the Pope, 13 May 1935 :] The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

You are engineers of human souls.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

Democracy, then, cannot be government by the people: it can only be government by consent of the governed. Unfortunately, when democratic statesmen propose to govern us by our own consent, they find that we don’t want to be governed at all, and that we regard rates and taxes and rents and death duties as intolerable burdens. What we want to know is how little government we can get along with without being murdered in our beds.

It’s usually pointed out that women are not fit for political power, and ought not to be trusted with a vote because they are politically ignorant, socially prejudiced, narrow-minded, and selfish. True enough, but precisely the same is true of men!

[ Question asked by Shaw to presidential candidate Michael Dukakis regarding his wife :] Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?

[ Of Rome :] A venal city ripe to perish, if a buyer can be found.

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, “Then let them eat cake.”

If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually assembled to devote their time to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed.

The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage.

Malefactors of great wealth.

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.

[ Responding to the question of whether he was available to run for vice-president :] I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

The Soviet Union, as everybody who has the courage to face the fact knows, is run by a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted—in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest . . . of his head.

Modern complexities call also for a constant infusion of new blood in the courts, just as it is needed in executive functions of the Government and in private business. A lowered mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation; older men, assuming that the scene is the same as it was in the past, cease to explore or to inquire into the present or the future.

[ On the “court-packing plan” increasing the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices :] This plan will save our national Constitution from hardening of the judicial arteries.