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.

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

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

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 U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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.

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.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.