The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

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.

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

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

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

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

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

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

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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

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

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