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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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

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.

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 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.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

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

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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