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

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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.

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.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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 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 real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.