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

Politics is the art of the possible.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.