Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

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.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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