Every country has the government it deserves.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

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

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.

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