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

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

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

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

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.

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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.

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

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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

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