The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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.

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

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.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.