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

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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.

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.

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

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.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

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

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.

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.