Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

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

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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.

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