Paul Foot

Very few, if any, Poplar councillors of 1921 were revolutionaries, however. They wanted to change their world by the means provided for them by the 1918 Representation of the People Act, through the ballot box. But they were not prepared to sit passively by while their power as elected councillors was whittled away by the economic system and the judges and regulators imposed not by ballot but by ancient prejudices and reactionary laws.
The real meaning of Poplarism is the use by elected representatives of their democratic power to challenge laws and customs that restrict democracy. The Poplar councillors not only used that power. They used it at least to some extent successfully, and for that they could never be forgiven

- The Vote: How it was Won and how it was Undermined, 2005:260

George Lansbury

The workers must be given tangible proof that Labour administration means something different from capitalist administration.'

- Quoted in The Vote: How it was Won and how it was Undermined, Paul Foot. 2005:259

We have got nothing by being passive and quiet, and we are going to be passive and quiet no longer.

- Quoted in The Vote: How it was Won and how it was Undermined, Paul Foot. 2005:260

Graham Greene

Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

- Our Man in Havana (2004:195)

'I didn't know there were class-distinctions in torture.'
'Dear Mr Wormold, surely you realize there are people who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement. ... Dr Hasselbacher does not belong to the torturable class.'
'Who does?'
'The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable ... It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal ... One reason why the West hates the Communist states is that they don't recognize class-distinctions. Sometimes they torture the wrong people. So too of course did Hitler and shocked the world. No one cares what goes on in our prisons, or the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler was too promiscuous. It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.'
'We're not shocked by that any longer.'
'It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.'

- ibid., 155

'Milly would never have married you, Segura. She doesn't really like cigarette-cases made of human skin.'
'Did you ever hear whose skin?'
'No.'
'A police-officer who tortured my father to death. You see, he was a poor man. He belonged to the torturable class.'

- ibid., 217

she realized the chief problem of their future - that he would never be quite mad enough.

- ibid., 225

Cicero

Not until Burke would you see another defence of oligarchy at the expense of democracy phrased with undisguised class hatred like this. But I particularly like the bit on music: makes me think that if he were alive today he'd be a columnist for the Daily Fail. Try and read it in the disapproving tone of 'Mad' Mel Phillips, you'll see what I mean.

suppose in a shipwreck a stronger man sees a weaker man on a plank, will he not push him off to save himself, especially if there are no witnesses? If he doesn't, he will act justly but will foolishly throw away his own life. So, ... political justice is not justice but prudence; natural justice is indeed justice, but is at the same time folly.

- Paraphrase of The Republic III.29-31, reconstituted from Lactantius, Divine Institutiones 5.16.5-13

a state should be organised in such a way as to last forever. And so the death of a state is never natural, as it is with a person, for whom death is not only inevitable but also frequently desirable. Again, when a state is destroyed, eliminated, and blotted out, it is rather as if (to compare small with great) this whole world were to collapse and pass away.

- The Republic, III.34

SCIPIO: ... wherever there is a tyrant, one cannot say ... that there is a defective republic; logic now forces us to conlcude that there is no republic at all. ... a place totally controlled by a clique cannot properly be called a republic either ...When everything is supposed to be done under the people's control, when the masses punish whoever they please, when they seize, carry off, hold on to, or squander whatever they like, can you deny then, Laelius, that a republic exists, when everythinng belongs to the public? After all, our definition of a republic is "the property of the people'.
LAELIUS: Actually there is no state to which I should be quicker to refuse the name of republic than the one which is totally in the power of the masses. ... I don't see how there is any stronger case for applying the name of republic to a state enslaved by the mob. ... That rabble is just as tyrannical as one man, and all the more repellant in that there is nothing more monstrous than a creature which masquerades as a public and usurps its name. It is quite inconsistent that, when the property of the insane is placed by law in the hands of male relatives because the former [are no longer capable of managing it themselves, the property of the public should be left in the hands of an insane mob]

- The Republic, III.44-45

Nothing can so easily influence young and impressionable minds as the variety of vocal sounds. One can hardly express what enormous power that exerts for better or worse. ... I do notice how in theatres which once used to be filled with the agreeable plainness of Livius' and Naevius' tunes audiences now rock to and fro jerking their necks and eyes in time with the inflexions of the singer's voice. Ancient Greece used to punish that sort of thing very severely. It foresaw far in advance that the deadly plague, gradually creeping into the citizens' minds and infecting them with pernicious crazes and pernicious ideas, would suddenly bring about the collapse of entire states

Laws 2:38-40

Ennius

Why should diviners seek celestial signs?
When goat or scorpion or some other beast
Comes up, then no one sees what lies before
His feet; they scan the regions of the sky.

- Achilles in Iphigenia, quoted in Cicero, The Republic I:30.

Firefly

You know what the chain of command is? It's a chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here.

- Jayne Cobb

Mal: Do you want to run this ship?
Jayne: Yeah.
Mal: Well... you can't.

Howard Spring

For a moment he hung over a gulf where he and his like, all the makers of windy promises, the pedlars of paradise, swirled like a handful of inconsiderable dust. He saw with clarity that the immortal aspirations of men for freedom, truth, beauty, equality, could never know secular satisfaction, and this very fact made both the glory and the tragedy of human life.

Fame is the Spur (1943:442)

"I expect," she said, "he'll do like the rest of us. He'll do what he wants to, till the time comes for him to wonder whether it was worth doing."

(ibid, 485)

Hardie interrupted him. "The world will be busier soon. We are on the brink of war." ... "Where will you be, Hamer? I am not asking you now as your old leader. As a friend, tell me, where will you be?" ...
"It is not a thing that can be decided off-hand," said Hamer, "There are a thousand considerations."
"There is one consideration," Hardie answered. "Thou shalt not kill."
He got up wearily and held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said. "Think of me at cock-crow."

(ibid, 474)

Charles looked relieved, and smiled again. "I must confess, Father," he said, "that I still find it a bit difficult to follow a man who once demanded the Millennium and now says he'll make do with Pleasant Sunday Afternoons."
"Go on demanding the Millennium, my boy," said Hamer. "God help us when we cease to do that. But don't expect to get it, and, above all things, don't try to shove it down the people's throats. If the Millennium pays a penny in the pound, you'll be lucky...."

(ibid, 646)

"I know his views. They're an old man's views, and as such I can tolerate them and even respect them. But, remember, Charles, there's an impulsive wisdom of youth as well as a cautious wisdom of age. The views he's been giving you weren't his views when he was as young as we are now."

(ibid, 660-1)

"There's no job now for romantics. We, on our side, have got to be as dispassionate as a sanitary squad, cleaning up a dirty smell. And we've got to be quick, because it's spreading, and soon it'll poison and suffocate every decent thing and instinct. ... This is the sabre of Peterloo."
She stood for a moment looking at the light playing on the curved blade ... : the blade that had slashed the life out of the girl Emma in a Manchester street, that the old Warrior had maundered over, that Ellen had polished with bathbrick, that Hamer Shawcross had used to carve his way to the notice and applause of the people, that Jimmy Newbould had worshipped, and that Lady Lostwithiel had embalmed in velvet. ...
"I wondered why I brought it," she said, "But now I know. The world is face to face with reality. It is time to make an end of romantic gestures."
She stood away from Charles, whirled the sabre in a shining circle once round her head, then hurled it far out into the radiance of the moonlight. Silently, as if spellbound, they watched the silver splash of its fall, an Excalibur that no hand was lifted to receive.
For a moment, neither spoke; then Charles said quietly: "That was the most romantic gesture I have ever seen."

(ibid, 661)

Virgil

Being myself / No stranger to grief, I am learning to help the unhappy.

- Dido, The Aeneid, I:631-2

Trust not the horse, / You people of Teucria's land. Whatever it is, / I fear the Danaans, even when bearers of gifts.

- Lacoon, The Aeneid, II: 49-52

Just because it's good to know you've been misquoting it for years. At least, if you're me. And if 'thinking it in your head sometimes' counts as misquoting. And if you often said 'Romulans' instead of 'Greeks' anyway, in deference to Star Trek II.

Rome

Titus Pullo: Here's your money. But she'd better fuck him like Helen of Troy with her arse on fire.

Lucius Verenus: All will be well: a suitable offering was made to Triton.
Titus Pullo: Cack. If Triton can't keep us drier than this, he can suck my cock.

Sophocles

only the gods never become old, never die.
Time - dictator time - wrecks all else.
The might of the earth wastes away.
The strength of the body too.
Loyalty faith trust, all die, and treachery flourishes.
No spirit remains constant between men, between cities.
Soon
or perhaps later
the sweet becomes bitter and then loved again.
And so if between you and Thebes the days now pass in pleasantness, infinite time brings on infinite days and nights, in which, to the echo of a small word, a spear will smash the concord of past days.
And then my sleeping corpse, hidden, cold, will drink their hot blood

Oedipus, in Oedipus at Kolonos, First Episode

Wonder
at many things
But wonder most
at this thing:
Man
who
crosses the speckled sea
across winter storms ...

He has found a way
to weave the different nets
that ensnare giddy birds
trap the wild species of the plains
and catch the dwellers of the sea.
Ingenious man ...

He taught himself speech
thought light as wind
the passions that raise cities
and
how to escape the bitter shafts
of rain
the frost
the wrath of the open sky.
Nothing stops him:
he finds his way through
everything.
From death alone he sees no
way out,
even though
he discovers routes through stubborn diseases.

Second Chorus, Antigone