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

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.

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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

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.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.