Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

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.

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

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

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