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

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.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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

Every country has the government it deserves.