Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

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.

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

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.

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.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

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

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

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

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

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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