Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.