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

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

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.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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.

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.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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.

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

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

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.