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

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.

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

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.

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

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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.

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

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.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.