The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

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 government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

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

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.

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

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

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.