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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

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.

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

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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.

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.

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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.