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 best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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

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

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

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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

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

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

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

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.