Countrymen Quote by Edward Gibbon

“When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst,…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

“My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most admirable panegyrick upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are…

— Jonathan Swift

A legislator must know how to take advantage of even the defects of those he wants to govern. The art consists in making others…

— Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge…

— James Madison

“MOST legislators have been men of inferior capacity whom chance exalted over their fellows, and who took counsel almost exclusively of their own prejudices…

— Montesquieu

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.

— Winston Churchill

“inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He was perfectly astonished with the historical account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap of…

— Jonathan Swift

“Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

“Politics, as he occasionally said, required three unchanging talents and no virtues. More politicians, he claimed, had been destroyed by virtue than by any…

— Howard Fast

“mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that…

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“his genius (for that it undoubtedly was) lay in a certain hot, instinctive cunning which told him how to win power, headlines and a…

— Hugh Brogan