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

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

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

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.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

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

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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