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.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

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

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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.

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

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

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

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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