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.

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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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

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

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.

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.