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 best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

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

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.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

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.

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

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.