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.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

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

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

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

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.

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.