John Wilkes Quotes
That, sir, depends on whether I embrace your mistress or your politics.
This was an amazing statement for a politician to make in a country where he needed votes to be reelected. The Afrikaners of South Africa were so paranoid about the possibility of their minority domination over the majority Blacks, that they voted overwhelmingly for Botha even though many were not sure of his policies and wanted a change. Botha was the “devil they knew” as opposed to a “devil they did not know”.
John Wilkes FRS was a British radical journalist and politician, as well as a magistrate, essayist and soldier. He was first elected a Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of his voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives. In 1768, angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the St George's Fields Massacre. In 1771, he was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In 1776, he introduced the first bill for parliamentary reform in the British Parliament.
