The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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

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.

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