The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

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.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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