Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

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

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

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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