A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

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

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

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

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