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

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

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.

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.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.