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

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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.

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.