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.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.