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.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

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