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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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