A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job.

Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

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.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

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

Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa’s leading organization – and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars.

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.

I consider myself a moderate Republican. I have very, very moderate social views, and I’m pretty strong on, on defense matters.

The FBI should not be a political body.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

The neo-cons constitute a radical reactionary fringe of the planning spectrum, but the spectrum is narrow.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

The only bipartisanship you ever see is when they finally sign a bill and everybody says, ‚Gee, isn’t that wonderful?‘

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

The fundamental question I believe is, ‚Is political Islam in our best interest?‘ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

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

What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

With Benghazi, I don’t see anyone saying, ‚Hey look, I am overall responsible for this and therefore, I take responsibility for what happened. It’s my fault.‘ I haven’t heard that yet. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin, the Osama bin Laden raid, it seems everyone made that decision, and that’s just unbelievable to me.

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

How can a president not be an actor?

Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove – disapprove of their point of view.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Putin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.

Facts are not liberals‘ strong suit. Rhetoric is.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

I think that if I would talk on a political subject, if I talk about it, it would divide the audience on that issue. That’s not my issue.

The Soviet government is the most realistic regime in the world – no ideals.

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

I do not believe we will have a war with Iran.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.