I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

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.

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

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.

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

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