Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in a letter to A.S. Suvorin, Jan. 4, 1889 in: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem A. P. Chekhova, vol. P-3, p. 122
