All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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

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

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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.