What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

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

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

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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

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