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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

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.

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

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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