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.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

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 first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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

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

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

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

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.

Every country has the government it deserves.