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

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

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

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.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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