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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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.

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.

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

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.