Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

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 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.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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