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.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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

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.

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

Envy is the basis of democracy.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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