Politics is the art of the possible.

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.

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.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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

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

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

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.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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