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"When change of rulers happens to a state 'tis but a change of name for the poor."
- Phaedrus: Fables (c. 25BC)
"I entered parliament with what I thought to be the lowest possible opinion of the average member. I came out with one still lower."
- John Stuart Mill
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force."
- George Washington
"Politicians do not serve ideals; they make use of ideals."
- A.J.P. Taylor
"Between the government which does evil and the people who accept it there is a certain shameful solidarity."
- Victor Hugo
"Every advantage gained by the people has been gained in defiance of government, never by its aid or as a gift."
- Monty Miller (1916)
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens, and giving It to another."
- Voltaire
"The less government, the better, the fewer laws, and the less confided power."
- Emerson
"Politicians are men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are taken as a class at least one long step removed from honest men : and I say this with the greater freedom, because I am myself a politician and none can regard it as personal."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Real change comes about not because we vote for it, but because we fight for it, shout for it, work for it. Placing hopes and fears on who holds power, or who will gain power through voting, is wasting time which might be spent in creating alternatives, both for ourselves and for our communities."
Chumbawamba - 1987
"A statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote. A journalist makes up his lies, And takes you by the throat. So stay at home and drink your beer, And let the neighbours vote."
- W. B. Yeats
"Those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly they chose evil."
- Hannah Arendt
"Nearly all great men are bad men. Power is poison....The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern; every class is unfit to govern."
- Lord Acton
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