Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds, and Massachusetts politics had been as harsh as the climate.
Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Chapter One: “Quincy” (1907).
Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography (1883). Frederick Waddy, illustrator.
There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights.
John Quincy Adams, Letter written as Secretary of State under President James Monroe (1819).
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.
Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780).
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
Thomas Paine, “The Forester’s Letters,” Letter III—‘To Cato,’ Pennsylvania Journal (April 24, 1776).
It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869).
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1.
It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.
Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn (1869). Frederick Waddy, illustrator.
That rabble had a mighty power over minds, for when the Lord God sends punishment on a nation he first deprives its citizens of reason. And so the wiser heads dared not resist the fops, and the whole nation feared them as some pestilence, for within itself it already felt the germs of disease. They cried out against the dandies but took pattern by them; they changed faith, speech, laws, and costumes. That was a masquerade, the licence of the Carnival season, after which was soon to follow the Lent of slavery.
Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz (1834), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).
I have found from many observations that our liberals are incapable of allowing anyone to have his own convictions and immediately answer their opponent with abuse or something worse.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (1869), as quoted as an epigraph to Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016).