Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

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.

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

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

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

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

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

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.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.