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.

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

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

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

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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 U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.