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.

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

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

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

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.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

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.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.