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

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

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 whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

Politics is the art of the possible.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

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.