(3089/898) More political brickbats

1151) Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government."

Lenny Bruce (widely attributed)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (7/3/95)

[Note: Sometimes attributed to Abbie Hoffman.]

1152) Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

Robert Byrne
The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2001)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (7/3/95)

1153) An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

Simon Cameron (widely attributed)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (7/3/95)

[Note: Ralph Keyes concludes that these are "Familiar words put in Simon Cameron's mouth" by "one of his many enemies." [QV]]

1154) Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified for having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people's anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble - yes, gamble - with a whole part of their life and their so-called "vital interests".

Albert Camus
Notebooks (8/1937)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (7/3/95)

1155) Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means-to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis
dissenting opinion in
Olmstead et al v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (7/3/95)