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.

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

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.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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

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

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

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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