I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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

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.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.