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

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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

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

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.

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.

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