Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

It was the Congress that imposed ‚Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,‘ it was certainly my position, my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred.

I’m not a politician. And I don’t want to be.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

The FBI should not be a political body.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

I have not endorsed Trump and will not do so.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected.

You can’t just have slogans, you can’t just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it’s going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

It is important that the United States remain a two-party system. I’m a fellow who likes small parties and the Republican Party can’t be too small to suit me.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good. I cannot wash my hands, eh? We all have to give something!

I’m not a conservative of any kind.

I don’t follow politics much.

You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

I guess you’d call me an independent, since I’ve never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.

All impeachments, I guess, are political.

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

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead for 15 years.

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

I stay out of politics because if I begin thinking too much about politics, I’ll probably… drop writing children’s books and become a political cartoonist again.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

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?‘

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

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?

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.