The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

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

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

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.

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.