Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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