The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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.

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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

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.

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

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.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.