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

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

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.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

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

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 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.

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

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.