An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

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

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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