The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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

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

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.