This presidential election is said to be about change. Some say nothing ever changes in politics. I tend to be more optimistic than that – but then, these gems:

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

“The more laws, the less justice.”

And finally:

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

All of these nuggests are credited to Marcus Tullius Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 B.C.

It could be a long millennium …