Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Themes
Government
Power, safety, and the people who administer both.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Man is by nature a political animal.
The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.
The state has never any concern with truth, but only with the truth useful to it, or rather, with anything that is useful to it, be it truth, half-truth, or error.
Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government when it deserves it.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
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, most of them imaginary.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.
All zoos actually offer to the public is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.