Envy is the basis of democracy.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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