Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

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