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.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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

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

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

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

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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.