Aphorisms Galore!

Law and Politics

163 aphorisms  ·  7 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/64hrko9k  ·  submitted 1997

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/7u0qrtca  ·  submitted 1999 by Sugar

If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.

Thomas Jefferson, in Law and Politics and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/g1wxfjbw  ·  submitted 1997

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Thomas Jefferson, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/ut6ks243  ·  submitted 1997

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Thomas Jefferson, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/mj0tyu5v  ·  submitted 1998 by Lassi Kämäri

Thoughts cannot be censored.

Lassi Kämäri, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/4oqnfdf0  ·  submitted 1997

The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.

John Kane, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/vkpbru1q  ·  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  ·  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  ·  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  ·  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/zxzulgcs  ·  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  ·  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  ·  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  ·  submitted 1997

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

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

tiny.ag/lvxaopme  ·  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  ·  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  ·  submitted 1997

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

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

tiny.ag/b5nmoo2s  ·  submitted 1997 by James Menzies

Mein Kampf (paperback)

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see Paradise as Hell; and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as Paradise.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/xu5z217a  ·  submitted 1997

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.

Adolf Hitler, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/v1p3a7wp  ·  submitted 1997

Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins.

Zechariah Chafee, "Freedom of Speech in Wartime", Harvard Law Review, vol. 32, pp. 932–957 (1919), in Law and Politics