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

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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 more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.