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

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

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.