“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.”

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

“I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”

“The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus.”

“Every complex problem has a simple solution that doesn't work.”

“In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.”

“When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.”

“In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.”