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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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