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.

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

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

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.

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’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

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.

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