You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

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.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

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

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