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

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

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.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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

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

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.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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.

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

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

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.