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 am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

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.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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

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.

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