It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

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.

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

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

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.

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.