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

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

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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.

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

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

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

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.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.