The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

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.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

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.