A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

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.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

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

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

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

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

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

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