My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

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

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

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

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

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

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.

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

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

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.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.