Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.