“There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress, as well as others, than I had any conception [of], before I became President of the U.S.”— James K. Polk, en.wikiquote.org
“The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.”— James K. Polk, en.wikiquote.org
“The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.”— James K. Polk, en.wikiquote.org
“Foreign powers do not seem to appreciate the true character of our Government.”— James K. Polk, en.wikiquote.org
“By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching…”— James K. Polk, yale.edu
“We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away…”— Thurgood Marshall, thurgoodmarshall.com
“The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.”— Thurgood Marshall, thurgoodmarshall.com
“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”— Thurgood Marshall, thurgoodmarshall.com
“Stating scientific facts about the atmosphere of our planet is not and must not be 'politics.' Reality should not be a political stance. If someone's political stance requires preventing scientists from informing you about your own planet, that's not politics, it's oppression.”— Katie Mack, twitter.com
“Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend. We were the ones that worked with Saddam Hussein. The United States worked with bin Laden.”— Al Sharpton, en.wikiquote.org
“I do believe the [Democratic] party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.”— Al Sharpton, en.wikiquote.org
“No great power, even if its government strives towards it, can send out a large army to fight against another allied power, another great power, since in the present day no one can wage war without their own people, and the people don't want to fight. The nations [of the world] are tired of war.”— Joseph Stalin, digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org
“We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was. We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos was born.”— Al Sharpton, amazon.com
“Each of us can make this change happen by doing things differently in our own lives. But it's down to Governments to make the really big shifts towards sustainability.”— Caroline Lucas, twitter.com
“Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first…”— Aung San Suu Kyi, amazon.com
“There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless 'law' is equated with justice and 'order' with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done. Law as an instrument of state oppression is a familiar feature of totalitarianism. Without a popularly elected legislature and an indep…”— Aung San Suu Kyi, amazon.com
“The true measure of the justice of a system is the amount of protection it guarantees to the weakest.”— Aung San Suu Kyi, amazon.com
“The words 'law and order' have so frequently been misused as an excuse for oppression that the very phrase has become suspect in countries which have known authoritarian rule.”— Aung San Suu Kyi, amazon.com
“Hope and optimism are irrepressible but there is a deep underlying premonition that the opposition to change is likely to be vicious. Often the anxious question is asked: will such an oppressive regime really give us democracy? And the answer has to be: democracy, like liberty, justice and other soc…”— Aung San Suu Kyi, amazon.com