Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

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

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

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

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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

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

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 whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

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.