The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I’m angry about bankers. About the government.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

Politics have no relation to morals.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‚What have you done?‘

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

I’m going to be a vice president very much like George Bush was. He proved to be a very effective vice president, perhaps the most effective we’ve had in a couple of hundred years.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.

It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Music belongs to the people. To no one else. To no one else.

Obamacare sucks, it can’t be fixed.

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Politically, the world is so confused right now – there’s so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

People from North India are generally known to be aggressive and emotional.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

I love being in the United States Senate.

I like entertaining people. I really miss it.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

Washington isn’t a city, it’s an abstraction.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.