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

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

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.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

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

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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.