I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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.

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.

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

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