Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.