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.

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

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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.