Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

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

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.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.