I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

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.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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

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