Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

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.

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

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

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

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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.

Politics is the art of the possible.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.