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.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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.

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

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

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.

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

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.

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