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.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

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

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.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.