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.

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

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

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

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

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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.

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

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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