The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.

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

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

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.