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

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.

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

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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.

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

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

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Politics is the art of the possible.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.