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

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

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

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

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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.

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

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

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

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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