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

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

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

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

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

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

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

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

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.