Politics is the art of the possible.

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

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

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.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

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

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.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.