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

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

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

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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 vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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