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.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

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.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

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

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

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.

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.