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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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.

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

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.