A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.

My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington.

Our focus needs to be less on what our legacy’s going to be or how we can control each other and more how we can give to each other.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it.

Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

My government is working for the common man. Our priority is the poor of the country. We want good governance through a dynamic and seamless government.

If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.

It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen.

If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

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.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

The devil ain’t got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil’s a good friend, too… because when you don’t know him, that’s the time he can mosh you down.

Public opinion in Egypt is very antagonistic to the way the dictatorship, Mubarak dictatorship, interpreted relations with Israel. Very antagonistic.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

I don’t think the government should be in the trailer-park business. I don’t think they know how to run a trailer park.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know that the men and women of our intelligence community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

People do not make wars; governments do.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

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

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

I love being in the United States Senate.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.