Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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

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

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.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

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.