The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

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