It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

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

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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

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

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

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.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

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.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.