Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.