My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Politics is the art of the possible.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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.

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

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

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

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.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.