I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

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

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

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

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