Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

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

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.