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

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

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

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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

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.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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