Pub Quiz: Political Quotes

Some Sunday afternoon fun for political mavens. Below are ten quotes and an alphabetic list of the political figures who said them. Match the quote to the quoted. Answers after the jump. Please post your scores and any comments (including if I misattributed anything — very possible with quotes).

1. The people have spoken…the bastards

2. I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived

3. Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they’re thinking at all.

4. Take criticism seriously, but not personally.

5. If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

6. Women will have achieved true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

7. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

8. You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

9. Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.

10. Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.

QUOTED
Winston Churchill
Hillary Clinton
Benjamin Disraeli
Bob Dole
Frederick Douglass
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Huey Newton
Jeanette Rankin
Harry S. Truman
Dick Tuck


ANSWERS: 1 point for each correct, maximum 10

1. Dick Tuck
2. Winston Churchill
3. Bob Dole
4. Hillary Clinton
5. Harry S. Truman
6. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
7. Frederick Douglass
8. Jeanette Rankin
9. Huey Newton
10. Benjamin Disraeli

Author: Keith Humphreys

Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University and an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at Kings College London. His research, teaching and writing have focused on addictive disorders, self-help organizations (e.g., breast cancer support groups, Alcoholics Anonymous), evaluation research methods, and public policy related to health care, mental illness, veterans, drugs, crime and correctional systems. Professor Humphreys' over 300 scholarly articles, monographs and books have been cited over thirteen thousand times by scientific colleagues. He is a regular contributor to Washington Post and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Monthly, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Times Higher Education (UK), Crossbow (UK) and other media outlets.

5 thoughts on “Pub Quiz: Political Quotes”

  1. I think it was the one and only Dick Tuck who sent the Mayflower moving van to the front of the White House where Dan Rather was covering the news that Nixon was about to give the national address resigning the presidency. Dan Rather looked a bit flustered IIRC.

    1. And didn't he pay a visibly pregnant black woman to stand outside a Nixon event wearing a t-shirt saying "Nixon's the One"?

  2. I was surprised at how little of these I knew. As someone who lives in Washington with a dog, I knew the Harry Truman quotation. The Winston Churchill and Dick Tuck quotes I fairly confidently and correctly guessed at. Number 8, which I did not know and could not guess, is my favorite in this list.

  3. I was unsurprised to get Disraeli and Churchill backwards. I figure if I'd worked at it I might've gotten that straightened out. And now that I look at it, I bet I could've reversed Mister Douglass and the Notorious RBG if I'd thought harder. A disappointing six.

    But it was so nice to be reminded of Dick Tuck and a simpler, gentler, kinder time in American politics!

    1. Disraeli and Baldwin were just barely contemporaries (The former died before the latter entered politics), but 6 I think is a very good score. A number of the quotes could reasonably have been said by several people on the list, so I think anything over half right is excellent.

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