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.

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

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

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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.