The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Envy is the basis of democracy.