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.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

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.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

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.

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.

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.