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

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

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.

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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

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

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.