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.

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.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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