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

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.