Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.