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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

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.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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

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

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.

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

Every country has the government it deserves.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.