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

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

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 first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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.

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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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