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

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.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

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.

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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

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

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.