I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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

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.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

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

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.

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

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

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.