Politics¶

Attributed to Georges Clemenceau, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

President John F. Kennedy, remarks prepared (but not delivered), Dallas, Texas, November 22nd, 1963, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will “talk sense to the American people.“ But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but plain nonsense.

Peter Viereck, Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals, 1953, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Catholic-baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals.

John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.

Boris Marshalov, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens—and then everybody disagrees.

Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Will Rogers, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

I am not a member of any organized party—I am a Democrat.

Will Rogers, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

You've got to be [an] optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.

Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard, 1970, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Again people are looking for scapegoats. But this time the attack comes not from the outside but from within, from extremist splinter groups of the New Left made up of students and—I am sorry to acknowledge—also of some faculty who would like to see our colleges and universities denigrated, maligned and even shut down. They insinuate, distort, accuse, their aim being not to identify and correct real abuses, but always rather by crying alarm intentionally to arouse and inflame passions in order to build support for “non-negotiable demands.“ Clearly the old McCarthy technique is at work again. . . . It is more difficult to maintain a realistic sense of human limitation, to refuse to becaome frustrated and angry; to analyze, to assess, to seek to understand and explain; to determine to be adult and fair; and thus to work patiently to improve while refusing to succumb to either cynicism or hopelessness. It is the long way around, but it is the civilized way, and the only way for those [who] have come truly to understand the role of human learning.

Attributed to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, on the subject of homosexuality, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Does it really matter what these affectionate people do—so long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses!

President Abraham Lincoln, 1861, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves the much higher consideration.

Gideon J Tucker, 1866, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.

Willis Player, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.

Dialogue between woman and Adlai E. Stevenson, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Oh, Mr. Stevenson, your speech was superfluous.
—Thank you, madam. I've been thinking of having it published posthumously.
Oh, won't that be nice. The sooner the better.

Adlai E. Stevenson, 1952, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends. . . . That if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

Henry L. Stimson, who closed the code-breaking office, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.

President Abraham Lincoln, 1857, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone.

President John F. Kennedy, 1961, quoted after Library of Congress: Respectfully quoted

And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient—that we are only 6 percent of mankind—that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity—and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.