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

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

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

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

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

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

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Politics is the art of the possible.

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

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

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

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

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.