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

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

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

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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