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.

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 first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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

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

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.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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

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

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

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.