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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

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

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