If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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

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

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