To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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

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

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.