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

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.

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

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

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

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