Related:

• Conservative, n: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 1911...
• QUIVER, n. A portable sheath in which the ancient statesman and the aboriginal lawyer carried their lighter arguments.
  He extracted from his quiver, Did the controversial Roman, An argument well fitted To the question as submitted, Then addressed it to the liver, Of the unpersuaded foeman....
• GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• Coward, n.: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• Reporter, n.: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...