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.

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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.

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

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

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