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

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

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.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

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