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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.