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

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

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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.

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

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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.