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

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

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

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

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.

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.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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