Every country has the government it deserves.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

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

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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

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

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.

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

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