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

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

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

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

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.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

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

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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