A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Arena His Imaginary Pit Politics Rat Record Statesman Which

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

The legislator must be in advance of his age. Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.

Woodrow Wilson

He described how, as a boy of 14, his dad had been down the mining pit, his uncle had been down the pit, his brother had been down the pit, and of course he would go down the pit.

Barbara Castle

I got it into my head that I had somewhat neglected the guitar, and then I did a record called 'Arena,' and it was not a particularly bad record - it wasn't a bad record at all, but it was built around a certain concept, which is a guitar quartet, with a little bit of augmentation here and there.

Todd Rundgren

A faint light burned in the pit revealing a furry creature hunched over a stone slab, fiddling with something. At first Gregor raised a warning hand. He thought it was a rat. Then the creature lifted his head and Gregor recognized what was left of his dad.

Suzanne Collins

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

Aneurin Bevan

There are flaws in the way politics is reported in this country today and we should do something about it, .. Radio and television coverage of politics doesn't see its role as a mission to explain, but to destroy, in a pernicious culture in which journalists pit themselves against politicians.

Tim Allen

A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.

Adrienne Rich

The rat turned his glowing eyes on him, and Gregor was shocked by what he saw there. The intelligence, the deadliness, and, most surprisingly, the pain. This rat was not like Fangor and Shed. He was much more complicated and much more dangerous. For the first time in the Underland, Gregor felt completely out of his league. If he fought this rat, he wouldn't stand a change. He would lose. He would be dead.

Suzanne Collins

A politician thinks of the next election; a statement of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.

James Freeman Clarke

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.

Toni Morrison

Richelieu was a great statesman, and like all great statesman, he was a very ruthless man. He's not cruel. He just does what he has to do. And in his own mind, he's absolutely right.

Adrian Hodges

People say never work with children and animals. I actually like working with Oliver Bell, and working with a rat really opens possibilities to you because you don't know how it's going to be. It's just a rat, so you can just react to this rat being a rat, if that makes sense.

Tamzin Merchant

There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.

John Piper

One of my favourite sorts of actors...the rat actor. The rat actor knows his job and gets it done.

Joss Whedon

In our country and in our times no man is worthy the honored name of statesman who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all his plans of administration. He may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence; and by these he might claim, in other countries, the elevated rank of a statesman: but unless he speaks, plans, labors, at all times and in all places, for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be, an American statesman.