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.

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.

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

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

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.