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

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

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

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

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

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.

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

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

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

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.