It is impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.

- Mignon McLaughlin

There is no more irritating fellow than the man who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or liberty, by quoting from Webster.

- Mortimer J. Adler

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

- Mark Twain

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

- Henry Miller

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we must all be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

- William O. Douglas

The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it.

- Woodrow Wilson

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.

- Plato

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.

- J. William Fulbright

When nations grow cold, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree.

- William Blake

After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.

- Fred Thompson, U.S. Senator, lawyer, writer, and actor

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.

- Ambrose Bierce