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

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

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

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

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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

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.

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.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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.