I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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.

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.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

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