Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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

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

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

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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