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

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

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.

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.

Politics is the art of the possible.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

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