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

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

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.

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

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

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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.

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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