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.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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