While it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to comprise a list of the 25 best quotes on politics - heck, the previous administration alone could keep one busy for decades - an attempt is made here to at least give the reader a moment to reflect on what are generally considered to be words of critical thought.

As should be expected, not all quotes were made by politicians. Included with them in this list are authors, scientists, and humorists.

1.  “All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.” - Albert Einstein

2.  “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” - Aesop

3.  “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” - John Stuard Mill

4.  "Let us, therefore, beware of being lulled in to a dangerous security; and of being enervated and impoverished by luxury: of being weakened by internal contentions and divisions;  of being shamefully extravagant in contracting private debts, while we are backward in discharging honourably those of the public: of neglect in military exercises and discipline, and in providing stores of arms and munition of war, to be ready on occasion: for all these are circumstances that give confidence to enemies, and diffidence to friends; and the expenses required to prevent a war, are much lighter than those that will, if not prevented, be absolutely necessary to maintain it." - Ben Franklin

5.  "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." - Thomas Jefferson

6.  “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” - Abraham Lincoln

7.  "Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke." - Will Rogers

8.  "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill

9.  “If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism.”  - Fidel Castro

10. “Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.”  - George Washington

11. “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” - Benito Mussolini

12. “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” - Edmund Burke

13. “We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will.” - Kofi Annan

14. “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.” - Daniel Webster

15. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” - John Milton

16. “In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.” - Charles de Gaulle

17. "Once you leave the womb, conservatives don't care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers." - George Karlin

18. “Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.” - H. L. Mencken

19. “Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Hermann Wilhelm Goring

20. “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” - Edward Abbey

21. “Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” - George Orwell

22. “The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.” - H. L. Mencken

23. “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

24. “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.” - Gore Vidal

25. “In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap.” - Napoleon Bonaparte