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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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