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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

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

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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 vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.