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.

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

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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