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

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.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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.

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

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

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

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.