All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.