I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

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

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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