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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

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

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.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

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.

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

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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