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

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

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

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.

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

Politics is the art of the possible.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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

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