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.

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.

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

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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.

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.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Politics is the art of the possible.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.