We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.

It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

Life. It’s about adventure, of having a dream and following it.

Fear is the mother of morality.

I should hate to think that the Senate was as tired of me at the beginning of my service as I am of the Senate at the end.

I love making art... It's largely how I see myself. I'm an artist; therefore I have to make art.

A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.

Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they fit easily into the overhead compartment of your brain.

Maybe the gruffness and anger can be done with a purity of sound.

... no matter how one's heart aches, one can do the necessary things and do them well.

Thus aged men, full loth and slow, The vanities of life forego, And count their youthful follies o'er, Till Memory lends her light no more.

I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.