Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

Politics is the art of the possible.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.