Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.