Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

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

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

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.

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.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

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

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!