I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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

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

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.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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