No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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

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

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

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.