Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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 have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

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

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.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.