You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

Every country has the government it deserves.

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

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.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

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.

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.

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.

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