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

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.

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.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.

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

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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.

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

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

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