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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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