The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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

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.

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

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