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

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.

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.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.