Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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

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

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

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.