There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

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

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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