What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

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

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 tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.