nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?
Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.
I never had tons of friends on tour. I was quiet and went about my business.
We extol ancient things, regardless of our own times. [Lat. , Vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi. ]