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

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

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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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.

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.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

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

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

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

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.