Aphorisms Galore!

Law and Politics

163 aphorisms  ·  7 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/vdyroj5m  ·   Fair (179 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Bertolt Brecht, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/vkpbru1q  ·   Fair (292 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, "patriotism" is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

Ambrose Bierce, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/sp9ytcxh  ·   Fair (420 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/16qnix2l  ·   Fair (183 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.

Otto von Bismarck, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/7pr2vmql  ·   Fair (353 ratings)  ·  submitted 1998 by Edward Wayne Blakeman

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, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/hjlqxeds  ·   Fair (337 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

Christian Nevell Bovee, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/zxzulgcs  ·   Fair (368 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

John Perry Barlow, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/ebp3wveo  ·   Fair (274 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.

Lyman Beecher, in Law and Politics and Science and Religion

tiny.ag/yvxqb7s2  ·   Fair (1183 ratings)  ·  submitted 1999

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not the opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed the same kind.

George Bernard, in Law and Politics and Life and Death

tiny.ag/5agdml7e  ·   Fair (247 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

Yogi Berra, (on Frenchmen in American politics), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/lvxaopme  ·   Fair (463 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/fiog0z7u  ·   Fair (1221 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/zcjracxo  ·   Fair (259 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/0c4jaqsc  ·   Fair (269 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Oscar Ameringer, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/bncpxtdu  ·   Fair (284 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

I'm very critical of the U.S., but get me outside the country and all of a sudden I can't bring myself to say one nasty thing about the U.S.

Saul Alinsky, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/vruohmzb  ·   Fair (671 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many.

Howard Koch, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/gcsjx97v  ·   Fair (66 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.

Henry Kissinger, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/r1fscizb  ·   Fair (69 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

Henry Kissinger, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/qk3eo0wc  ·   Fair (48 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.

Clark Kerr, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/jy8gye2w  ·   Fair (768 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Those who rule the symbols rule us.

Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 1933 (4th ed., 1958), in Law and Politics