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.

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

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.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

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.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.