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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

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

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.