Who Said It? And What Year? --A Quiz Featuring Barbed Remarks About Politicians and Politics

In our current era the obsession with being up to the minute and "in the know" has caused many people to lose any sense of perspective. If a politician gets caught in a lie, the incident is treated as if it has never occurred before in human history. At every instant in time "Trending News" feeds into all our devices to keep us continuously distracted by the now. Sensational headlines seem to have one singular objective, like the kid on the playground who said, "Made ya look!"

For this reason, I thought it might be interesting to serve up 10 quotes from the past to serve as a counterweight to this "Now" obsession that skews our perspectives in this fog of media wars. 

THIS IS A QUIZ, though if you do not wish to play, scroll down and read the quotes simply for entertainment purposes.

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YOUR ASSIGNMENT, if you want to play, is to read each quote, guess who said it and what year. Take a sheet of paper, number it from 1 to 10 and write your answers. Write the name of the Person who said it, and the Year that they said it. 

Scoring: 2 points for guessing who said it. 2 points for guessing the year. 1 point for being within 3 years of the year. 

2 Bonus Points for accurately naming the person and the year. Maximum score: 60 points or 6 points per question. 

Answers will be found at the bottom of this page Below the Photo. 

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1.

Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party.  

2.
Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got. 

3.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.  

4.

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

5. 
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.  

6. 
… that is the nature of politics: poly, meaning more than one, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking parasites. 

7. 
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

8.
Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen. 

9.
I don't make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts. 

10.
A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden.   

ANSWERS

EdNote: If I had it all to do over again I would have skipped making this into a game. I just wanted to share the quotes. Alas, having done all this work, I will go ahead and share. Did anyone get more than 3? 

1. Bertrand Russell (1922)

2.  H.L. Mencken (1916)

3. Mark Twain (1916)

4. Simon Cameron (1862)

5. Paul Valery (1943)

6. Kinky Friedman (2007)

7. John Kenneth Galbraith (1962)

8. Friedrich Nietzsche (1883)

9. Will Rogers (1930s)

10. Alexander Hamilton (1802)