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.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

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.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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.

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

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!