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

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.