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

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.

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

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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.