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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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