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.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.