The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

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

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.