If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

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

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.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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