You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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.

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

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

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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

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

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

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.

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

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