The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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.

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

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.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

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

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

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

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.