I took these ten Benjamin Franklin quotes and used them to illustrate both the universality of human behavior and their usefulness as a touchstone in understanding politics.
Politics is all about people – Numbers in politics are always an afterthought; used to convince a public brought up on the pseudoscience of pie charts and percentages. [That the same basic data can be used to support widely differing conclusions is common knowledge, and usage, among corporate report writers.]
Like the Mark Twain quotes; once again, there is an insight into human nature that overrides the “issues” that are used to distract us.
Since human nature is universal and unchanging: why does our bureaucracy continue to get more complicated? Why indeed.