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.

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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