You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

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.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

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.

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.

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

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

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.