A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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

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

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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

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.